Insights

<p>This week, several newspapers across California published my investigative series focusing on the threats posed by nitrates in groundwater. The full stories with accompanying sidebar&nbsp;can be read <a href="http://www.californiawatch.org/coping-with-nitrate-contamination">here<…;, along with multimedia resources that include video, photo slideshows, and a three-part series on nitrates by KQED Radio.</p>

<p>Melvin Baron has spent his career educating the public about health and medicine, first as a pharmacist and then as a <a href="http://www.usc.edu/schools/pharmacy/faculty_directory/detail.php?id=25"… Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacy</a>. He’s 77 now, and he confesses to some frustration with the handouts that pharmacists and doctors use to inform patients about health and medicine.</p> <p>“Much of what we give you is lousy,” he told me. “It’s a lot of words. Most of it is way above the audience. It doesn’t resonate and it’s boring.”</p>

<p>A new drug comes on the market that promises to improve people’s eyesight. “Clarivue! Make your cloudy days sunny again!”</p> <p>Your editor says, “This Clarivue is like Viagra for eyeballs. It’s going to be flying off the shelves. Write up something for the Web in the next hour.”</p> <p>Your next move should be to find out the NNT: <a href="http://www.cebm.net/index.aspx?o=1044">the number needed to treat</a>. It will help you answer the most important question: How many people would need to take Clarivue in order for one person to actually see better?</p>

<p><em>Health Dialogues, </em>a special series from KQED Public Radio exploring California health care issues, is seeking community voices to chronicle the health of their cities for our new blog, <em>Our State of Health: California Reports</em>. The blog will feature citizen correspondents from across California, filling us in on the latest news and attitudes in health from around the state.</p>

<p>Who hasn’t come home from work with a company pen in their pocket? Used the work printer for directions to a restaurant on a Friday afternoon? Answered a call from their mom on the company cell phone?</p> <p>In that spirit, we could consider Dr. Duane Stillions just one of the rest of us.</p> <p>If only he weren’t a children’s physician with a drug habit.</p> <p>Stillions, a 42-year-old anesthesiologist, was caught in May 2009 by Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC taking painkillers that were meant for kids undergoing surgery.</p>

<p><em>(Cross-posted from HealthyCal.org)</em></p><p>As the governor’s revised budget makes all too clear, California is in a world of hurt. The deepest recession since the Great Depression has reduced personal incomes, retail sales, corporate profits and property values. Those are the things the state and local governments tax to provide the revenue to support the schools, universities, health and social services and law enforcement on which most of us depend in one way or another.</p>

<p>So, California’s so-called “May revise” budget document is out, and as expected, the proposed cutbacks in health and social services programs are not pretty. <a href="http://www.californiahealthline.org/">California Healthline</a> has a comprehensive round-up of the coverage <a href="http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2010/5/17/governors-revise…;

<p><em>Antidote</em>’s posts over the past two weeks about reporting on risk stirred up some great discussion among journalists and scientists about how to best serve readers. Before launching into a new set of statistical concepts, I wanted to pause and share some of the most useful items.</p> <p>This whole jag about stats was started by a comment Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the editor of JAMA, made that Vioxx should still be on the market.</p>

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<p>The release of a major new <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/state_data/state_highlights/… report on states' tobacco control programs</a>, the first since 2006, is a great news peg for taking a look at what's happening with stop-smoking efforts in your state and community. The CDC report gives state-by-state breakdowns of smoking rates by age and other demographics and provides a snapshot of current state regulations on smoking.</p>