Insights

<p><em>Editor’s Note: The project featured in this post is one of a number of new media initiatives launched by <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/users/marylou">Mary Lou Fulton</a>, a grant-maker at <a href="http://www.calendow.org">The California Endowment</a>, which also supports ReportingonHealth. We’ve invited her to share the philosophy behind all of her new journalism and New Media grant-making on community health.

<p>The annual convention of the Asian American Journalists Association (<a href="http://www.aaja.org/">AAJA</a&gt;) early in August was filled from top to bottom with practical and career-oriented sessions. For me, one of the most useful was off the official books. By Twitter and email, AAJA Texas chapter president Iris Kuo organized a lunchtime get-together for freelancers in the hotel lobby.</p>

<p><strong>Foreclosures:</strong> Heart palpitations, insomnia, acid reflux: <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/02/MN891F6B62… can make you sick</a>, according to a new report covered by the San Francisco’s Victoria Colliver.</p> <p><strong>Flawed Polls:</strong> Political science professor Terry Jones <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6666/is_318_40/ai_n54804366/">e… flaws in media coverage of health care polls</a> in the St. Louis Journalism Review. &nbsp;</p>

<p>In March, <em>Antidote </em>launched a series called <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/shadow-practice-part-1-disciplined-doctor-found-exile-community-immigrant-health-care">The Shadow Practice</a> that reported on a network of shady physicians operating below the radar of most state and fed

<p>Here's what we're reading today:</p> <p><strong>Meridia:</strong> Sales of the weight loss drug Meridia might be about to go on a diet. New England Journal of Medicine editors are calling for it <a href="http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/nejm-fuels-calls-withdraw-abbotts-mer… be pulled off the marke</a>t in the wake of a new study documenting its risks.</p>

<p>Here's what we're reading today:</p> <p><strong>Breast Cancer:</strong> Not fun, but it works: preemptively removing the ovaries or breasts of women who carry either of the two BRCA breast cancer genes can help save the women’s lives even if they’ve already been diagnosed with cancer, according to a new study. The Los Angeles Times’ Thomas H. Maugh <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/31/science/la-sci-breast-cancer-20… the story</a>.</p>

<p>If <a href="http://www.delosherosmd.com/About%20Us.nxg">Dr. Reinaldo de los Heros</a> were a cat, he would have run out of lives. But, thanks to accommodating medical boards up and down the East Coast, de los Heros has survived and thrived. Here is a short guide to his fascinating history. You ca

<p>Some months ago, the receptionist in my clinic handed me a registered letter. The name of the sender seemed familiar. "Dear Sir," the letter read. "Please be advised that this letter serves as official notice that I am considering a potential claim against you in a medical Malpractice claim in regard to my husband. . . ." I stood, stunned. My white coat, which held the daily tools of my profession — my list of patients, the Sanford antibiotic manual, a black stethoscope — felt extraordinarily heavy.</p>

<p>Here's what we're reading and listening to today:</p> <p><strong>Nutrition:</strong> <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/29/2985813/dine-out-nutrition-facts-in-yo… don’t need no stinkin’ nutrition facts</a>. Just let me eat my 845-calorie taco salad in peace, okay?</p>

<p><em>Antidote</em> wrote last week about an odd rule set by the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?gl=us&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;msa=0&am…; State Board of Medical Examiners that allows a doctor accused of “inappropriate conduct” with female patients to continue seeing patients with a chaperone, unless they are 60 or older. At that age, the board considers the patients risk-free and allows the doctor to see them alone.</p>