Googling your way to wellness is nothing new. With a veritable slew of health and medical advice online it’s easier than ever to self-diagnose a condition or illness and find a cure mere seconds later. Many people also turn to print media as a source for health information with magazines and newspapers offering guidance on how people can take better care of themselves.
It could be said that the more educated individuals are about their bodies the healthier they will be, but wellbeing and medicine can often be complex topics and the information that’s available is sometimes misleading, not to mention constantly changing. So when it comes to providing advice in this space, what is the formula for getting it right?
Newcastle University Senior Lecturer at the School of Nursing and Midwifery Dr Amanda Wilson knows a thing or two about the accuracy of health news stories. She decided to look critically at a range of health articles in a selection of Australian lifestyle magazines to see what sort of information they were providing to their readers.
Wilson used a tool developed by the website Media Doctor* that assesses the accuracy of health content based on a set of 10 criteria. These included whether the advice was easy to understand, the type of evidence used, the credibility of the author, and the potential harm of treatments among others.
What the study found
The first thing Wilson noticed was that the range of health topics covered was quite limited with most of the publications devoting their stories to female sexual or gynaecological matters. The most popular topics beyond this were vitamins and mineral supplements, followed by heart disease/blood pressure and cancer that were equally reported on.
Wilson notes that there were some important contemporary issues that weren’t discussed like smoking and obesity. “I think this is a missed opportunity,” she says, “The reason that I don’t think these topics are regularly addressed is because they’re not particularly sexy. Even though there was a huge amount of dietary advice in the magazines, it was mainly special diets and what types of exercise we should be doing.”
Evidence and expertise is important when it comes to reporting on health but Wilson’s results showed that in many of the magazines the advice wasn’t based on reliable evidence or medical guidelines. There was often no indication of the qualification of the person giving it either. Product placement delivered similar results with conflict of interest Wilson’s main concern. However, there was one magazine – Dolly – that fared extremely positively. As Wilson explains, “The health advice in Dolly was all taken from the Dolly Doctor, who in real life is an Australian GP and medical researcher, associate professor Melissa Kang. In print, the Dolly Doctor appeared highly authentic and each reader question was handled ethically with sensitivity and clarity. There was no attempt to spruik products, the advice was appropriate and non-judgmental, and there was lots of encouragement to get support from a doctor, counsellor or parents.”
This ties in to another of Wilson’s conclusions from the study, that the magazines could address their audience more carefully. She believes that there is room for improvement when it comes to advising readers about ensuring they visit medical practitioners rather than take what is written in the articles as gospel.
How content creators can improve their health advice
While talking through each criteria that Wilson used to assess the magazines, some clear recommendations on how to appropriately approach health and medical content – be it in print or online – came to light. As individual health is of paramount importance using the right evidence and tone, plus weighing up the pros and cons will help readers make informed decisions.
1. Ensure the content is evidence-based and aligns with current guidelines.
Of this Wilson says, “A lot of information presented [in the magazines assessed] simply said ‘based on a study’ and if we could find the study they were referring to, often it was very, very old or just wasn’t relevant.”
Wilson advises that research papers used to back up articles should be no more than a few years old. She also recommends reaching out to specialists in that particular field who will be able to provide the most up-to-date evidence available. “Try using something like the Cochrane Library to seek out the right medical expert,” she advises.
2. The information provided must be clear, easily applicable and honest.
Dubious advice should be avoided says Wilson, for example, “If the author recommends that, ‘you need to increase your vitamin D intake,’ what level are we talking about? Are we supposed to get it from the sun, or as a supplement?”
She also says that it’s important any medical benefits are presented in a meaningful way, “A lot of the time we have a habit of saying ‘this will yield incredible results, it was a miracle’ that type of hyperbole, but anecdotal evidence should be avoided. Obviously human interest is important but you shouldn’t have someone with their miracle story presenting as evidence.”
3. Be transparent about potential harmful effects regarding treatments and if they are cost-effective or not.
Ensure that the reader will be able to try/buy/test any new-to-the-market product in Australia and be mindful of the cost.
“People spend a lot of money on products and while it’s important to weigh up the benefits and harms, we should also be weighing up the benefits and costs because it might not always be worth it,” says Wilson.
4. Choose the medical author and/or expert carefully and ensure there is no conflict of interest.
“[During the study] we looked at bylines and there were a huge variety in there: doctors, physios, chiros, [a] herbalist and a couple of psychics. But there were lots of stories that had no bylines at all so advice would just appear on the page. If we could find who the author was, we looked at the qualification and were able to see what kind of investment they had. If they were referring to their own book or presentation for example, the piece was marked down for that reason,” explains Wilson. “Declaring an interest is really important.”
5. Respect the readership
As aforementioned, Wilson credited Dolly for the way the Dolly Doctor spoke to the target audience and the fact that there was no anecdotal evidence that might mislead the reader.
“Everyone is different and when you visit a doctor, they are talking to you as an individual. I think this is something that Dolly manages to do really well, replicate that one-on-one advice and speak to the readers as if they were important individuals rather than just a mass audience.”
She continues, “While magazines in waiting rooms may not be an infection risk, their advice is generally poor enough for practitioners to give them the flick – with the exception, we might suggest, of Dolly.”
*Media Doctor is a website founded in 2004 that assesses the quality of health news reporting in the Australian media using the aforementioned rating tool. The Australian version of the website closed in 2011 but has been reproduced, and is currently up and running in Japan and India.
