How Journalists Characterize Health Inequalities and Redefine Solutions for Native American Audiences.

Many Native American communities experience severe health inequalities, including shorter average lifespan and higher rates of chronic illnesses. Journalism that serves Native Americans is a promising channel for heath communication, but only if scholars first understand the particular cultural contexts of indigenous communities. This research contributes to that goal by investigating how journalists serving Native American communities characterize health and the issues they identify with covering determinants of health. In in-depth interviews (N = 24), journalists contrasted how they cover health issues as embedded in cultural context with shallow, more negative coverage by non-Native media organizations. Interviews also revealed a tension between "medical" and "cultural" models of health, contributing to the oversaturation of certain issues, like diabetes, while other health topics are underrepresented. The journalists also expressed how social determinants and histories of oppression shape health inequalities, illuminating the roles of historical trauma and the destruction of indigenous health beliefs and behaviors. Failure to recognize these issues could stymie efforts to communicate about health issues facing Native American audiences.

False Balance in Public Health Reporting? Michele Bachmann, the HPV Vaccine, and "Mental Retardation".

This content analysis of media coverage of Michele Bachmann's erroneous comments that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation explores the relationship between truth-telling (the presentation of accurate information) and balance (presenting opposing perspectives of an issue equally and legitimately) in public health reporting. Of 200 articles analyzed, about 50% provided correction and about 40% provided a counterpoint. We also found that health reporters tended to engage in truth-telling and balance more than political reporters. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Semi-automated counting of axon regeneration in poly(lactide co-glycolide) spinal cord bridges.

BACKGROUND: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a debilitating event with multiple mechanisms of degeneration leading to life-long paralysis. Biomaterial strategies, including bridges that span the injury and provide a pathway to reconnect severed regions of the spinal cord, can promote partial restoration of motor function following SCI. Axon growth through the bridge is essential to characterizing regeneration, as recovery can occur via other mechanisms such as plasticity. Quantitative analysis of axons by manual counting of histological sections can be slow, which can limit the number of bridge designs evaluated. In this study, we report a semi-automated process to resolve axon numbers in histological sections, which allows for efficient analysis of large data sets. NEW METHOD: Axon numbers were estimated in SCI cross-sections from animals implanted with poly(lactide co-glycolide) (PLG) bridges with multiple channels for guiding axons. Immunofluorescence images of histological sections were filtered using a Hessian-based approach prior to threshold detection to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and filter out background staining associated with PLG polymer. RESULTS: Semi-automated counting successfully recapitulated average axon densities and myelination in a blinded PLG bridge implantation study. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING METHODS: Axon counts obtained with the semi-automated technique correlated well with manual axon counts from blinded independent observers across sections with a wide range of total axons. CONCLUSIONS: This semi-automated detection of Hessian-filtered axons provides an accurate and significantly faster alternative to manual counting of axons for quantitative analysis of regeneration following SCI.