Global Media Coverage of the Benefits and Harms of Early Detection Tests

Mary O'Keeffe, Alexandra Barratt, Alice Fabbri, Joshua R Zadro, Giovanni E Ferreira, Sweekriti Sharma, Ray N Moynihan

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Abstract

Innovations in technologies for early detection of diseases, such as breast cancer, dementia, and atrial fibrillation, are gaining increasing attention. The media is a key avenue through which tests are promoted to asymptomatic individuals, and it could have an important role in encouraging realistic expectations of the benefits and harms of early detection, including unnecessary diagnoses.1 Evidence suggests that medical media coverage tends to overplay benefits, downplay harms, and ignore conflicts of interest,2 but there are few data on coverage of early detection tests.
Original languageEnglish
Article number0261
Pages (from-to)865-867
Number of pages3
JournalJAMA Internal Medicine
Volume181
Issue number6
Early online date5 Apr 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Jun 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr O’Keeffe reported receiving grants from the European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship) outside the submitted work. Dr Barratt reported receiving grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia during the conduct of the study and serving as a scientific steering committee member and receiving travel and accommodation reimbursement from Preventing Overdiagnosis international conferences outside the submitted work. Dr Fabbri was supported as a postdoctoral fellow by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, project grant No. 1122332, during the conduct of the study. Drs Zadro and Moynihan are supported by research fellowships funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. Dr Moynihan reported receiving grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council during the conduct of the study and serving on the scientific steering committee of the Preventing Overdiagnosis conference outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.

Funding Information:
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Rotenstein reported being an owner of CareZoom, LLC. Dr Bates reported receiving grants and personal fees from EarlySense; personal fees from CDI Negev; equity from Valera Health, Clew Medical, and MDClone; personal fees and equity from AESOP; and grants from IBM Watson Health, outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Internal Medicine

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