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<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p> <p><strong>Heart Health:</strong> More American adults are taking medication to lower their blood pressure, but the number of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/27/AR20101… with hypertension is holding steady</a>, according to new CDC data, reports the AP’s Mike Stobbe.</p>
<p>If you haven’t seen this Kaiser Family Foundation <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Ilc5xK2_E">health reform video</a> yet, you should. Aside from being quite cute, it’s a fairly even-handed explanation of what health reform will and won’t provide.</p>
<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p> <p><strong>HuffPo Health:</strong> Orac of the Respectful Insolence blog <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/10/huffpost_health_a_soon-to-be_… on the new Huffington Post health section</a>, and it’s not pretty: “A soon-to-be one-stop shop for quackery.”</p>
<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p> <p><strong>Bad Boys: </strong>FiercePharma has put together a slideshow of <a href="http://www.fiercepharma.com/slideshows/notorious-names-biopharma?img=0"… misbehaving executives and researchers</a> in the biotech and pharma industries. It’s juicy.</p>
<p>When <a href="http://www.propublica.org/site/author/charles_ornstein">Charles Ornstein</a> talks about how to cover hospital quality, people tend to listen. His Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-kingdrew-gallery,0,5651209.storyga…; with Tracy Weber on egregiously poor medical care and other problems at a Los Angeles hospital led to its closure.</p>
<p>It’s always good to get a statistics refresher if you cover any kind of health research. Erika Franklin Fowler, an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, offered some tips on Saturday to California Endowment Health Journalism Fellows gathered for a seminar in Los Angeles. (Click <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/39975940/Erika-Franklin-Fowler-Getting-a-Grip…; for her complete presentation.)</p> <p>Here are some basic questions Fowler suggests journalists should ask before diving in to cover a medical study:</p>
<p><a href="http://sph.berkeley.edu/faculty/syme.php">Leonard Syme</a>, professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health, is something of a bomb thrower when it comes to talking about his field, <a href="http://www.paho.org/english/sha/be_v23n1-socialepi.htm">social epidemiology</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p> <p><strong>Health Insurance:</strong> Los Angeles’ City Attorney has <a href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fi-healthmarkets-20101021,0,7689480.st… national health insurer HealthMarkets</a> and its financial backers, including Goldman Sachs Group, for selling “junk insurance” to consumers and businesses, Duke Helfand of the Los Angeles Times reports.</p>
<p>Here’s what we’re checking out today:</p> <p><strong>Nutrition:</strong> Irony alert: Chicago public schoolchildren <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-school-gardens-20101019,0,4…’t eat the healthy, organic produce they grow in their school gardens</a> because of rules that commercial growers <em>don’t have to follow</em>. </p>
<p><em>We have a guest post today from <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/users/ivanoransky">Ivan Oransky</a>, executive editor of Reuters Health and co-author of the newish Embargo Watch and Retraction Watch blogs. Here, he has some tips for dealing with embargoed medical research. </em></p>