Envisioning 2.0

I thought I’d mention that I’ve written an essay on the value of healthcare blogs on HealthCareVox (my other blog).  Click here to read it.

I’m writing about the implications of a RICO lawsuit that was just filed against Pfizer by a New Jersey union on my other blog, HealthCareVox.  Click here to read it.

In an earlier post, I highlighted a RAND study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on healthcare quality. I also included commentary by Dr. Richard Allen Williams, founder of the Association Of Black Cardiologists, on the study in that post.

Michael Connery of Opportunity Agenda, “a communications, research, and advocacy organization dedicated to building the national will to expand opportunity in America,” commented on my earlier post today. I wanted to share it with a wider audience, because he made a few good points.

Dr. Williams responded to the study by saying: “A major aspect of the study is that it focuses on people who have had the good fortune to access the healthcare system. It is widely recognized that minorities do not gain access as readily as whites do; these are the individuals who are uninsured, underinsured, or are not included in the system for a variety of other reasons.”

Connery responded by saying:

“This is a great point, but not all of the picture. Numerous studies show that immigrants and people of color typically receive a lower quality of care even when they have similar insurance and similar health problems. Access is a big part of it, but quality of care is just as much a concern, and the conclusions of the Asch study contradict the findings of over 600 peer reviewed studies.

For more on this, check out the rebuttal written by Dr. Brian Smedley, study director for the Institute of Medicine Report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial Disparities in Health Care. It’s posted over at Matt Holt’s Health Care Blog. [Editor’s note: I saw Smedley’s editorial and commented on it on Matthew’s blog.]

You can also read a letter challenging the findings of the RAND/NEJM study. The letter was written and signed by numerous health care experts and 5 members of congress, and submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine last week. [Editor’s note: Please click here to see this letter.]

Michael, thanks for the heads up and for visiting (and leaving a comment on my blog). I can’t wait to see the “Opportunity Blog” when it is launched in 2006.

(By the way, for those of you interested in how to conduct “blogger relations,” Michael shows how to do it right. He read my blog and left a cogent and relevant comment, which resulted in me writing a post — and garnering him lots of “link love.” Michael, kudos, you know what you are doing.)

NHS Blog Doctor has a fantastic, very British edition of Ground Rounds this week.  He said something about cricket at the beginning of his post that I can’t make heads or tails of.  But, that does not matter.  Read his of this weekly carnival and prepare to be amused and entertained.

Also, Kudos to the Dr. for mentioning the Health Wonk Review.

Yesterday I wrote a post focusing on some comments that Mike Driehorst made about Strumpette’s potential link to a Chicago-based company called Forward, Inc. I mentioned this issue in an attempt to garner some much needed “link-love” for some healthcare non-profit blogs.

Well, folks it looks like I was taken in. Robert French e-mailed me last night and informed me that he contacted Driehorst to ask him about his comment. Driehorst told French that the comment was from him, but the “content of the comment was denied by the guy that was mentioned in it.” Specifically Brian Connolly of Forward Inc said that someone may have been using (or was assigned) his IP address when they made the comment.

Now, I’m not an Internet technology expert, so I’ll just say this: Driehorst made the comment, but now can’t confirm that his analysis holds water. I don’t know what to make of this, so I won’t comment on it further.

Anyway, the original intent of my post still stands. Support the healthcare non-profits listed in the post by going to their sites, critiquing their blogging efforts and telling others about them.

That’s it for now, and the last I’ll say (hopefully) about Strumpette – unless she or it starts offering up valuable scoops and content that is worth talking about. In any business, sex appeal only goes so far before people start asking for substance, you know what I mean?

I thought I’d add to the “explosion” (pun intended) of commentary about the latest PR blogger to hit the scene: the sexy “Strumpette” or “Amanda Chapel.” She (or it) is getting lots of buzz, so I’d thought I’d draw attention to my quiet, serious, low-circ blog by mentioning her, or it, or whatever. For anyone who cares, this is an obvious attempt to garner “link love” — but for a good cause, so read on.

Outing “Strumpette”

It appears that “Amanda” may be close to being outed. In a comment posted on Robert French’s blog infOpinions?, Mike Driehorst says:

“Now, I know relatively little about technology. So, the following may be hogwash, and no harm is meant by it. But . . .

I found the IP address for Ms. Chapel’s comment at:
http://www.contentmanager.net/community/forum/11/15/16.html
It’s a discussion through about “Miro International Supports Mambo Open Source Community in Disputing Furthermore Claims”
Ms. Chapel’s comment IP address is the same as someone named “Furthermore” in that discussion.

If you follow the link by “furthermore”:
http://www.literatigroup.com/versusmambo/content/view/54/46/1/2/
that is in that discussion, you get to a statement about Miro International. In that statement, there is reference to a Brian Connolly of Chicago-based Furthermore Inc.

Mr. Connolly had a couple comments on Steve Rubel’s blog in February about the Edelman Talk Shop look and brand: http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/02/talking_shop.html

Mr. Connolly’s Furthermore Inc. publishes wepublishing.com, a platform for managing Web community information.

So, is there a legit connection between Ms. Chapel and Mr. Connolly? Or, has my inept tech expertise been exposed?”

Now For The Legit Stuff: Healthcare Non-Profits That Deserve Link Love

Robert French has been asking people to share some link love with non-profits to draw attention to their activities and to support their blogging efforts (see this post.) I’ve nearly completed my massive report on healthcare blogging and there is a big section in it on healthcare non-profit blogs. So, here’s me giving link love to the non-profit blogs I highlight in my report. Visit their blogs, support them (if you agree with their cause) and link to them. Now, the list:

Healthcare Non-Profit Blogs

-Planned Parenthood: Save Roe!
-The March Of Dimes: Share Your Story
-The Amercan Lung Association Of Minnesota
-The Hastings Center: Bioethics Forum
-The MIRACLE Campaign
-The Constellation For AIDs Competence
-Camp ASCCA Journal
-A Healthy Blog

That’s all folks. . .

A female African American physician talks about patients’ (Black, White Asian) reaction to her.  A common question is: “Are you a doctor?”

Check out this article from the current edition of Newsweek for more.

(Via Kevin, MD)

The intelligent, insightful and controversial Kate Steadman, author of the blog Healthy Policy, is the hostess of the third edition of the Health Wonk Review. In the intro to her post, Kate had a few things to say about the great work of health policy bloggers. She said:

“As health policy wonks, we often find ourselves in unfortunate positions. Medical practitioners don’t trust us because we don’t have a practitioner’s education. Lay people have no clue what we’re talking about (we can be a little heavy on the acronyms). Our posts get buried in Grand Rounds because they’re not about the magic of healing. Our sites, full of thoughtful commentary and hard work, will never attain the traffic of straight political blogs. Worse still, we don’t even have good health policy wonk jokes!”

I agree. So go over and learn about some of the great work of health policy bloggers. And by the way Kate, thanks for including my submission.

Race-based medicine, or the practice of treating people differently based on their racial and ethnic background, has long been a subject of interest to healthcare providers, public health practitioners, communicators and others. Now, with the introduction of Bi-Dil, the first medication approved for the treatment of a condition in a specific race (African Americans), the topic is once again gaining increased attention.

Given the intense interest in this subject, I am conducting a series of periodic interviews with physicians, executives from medical societies, communications experts and others. Each interview subject provides his or her unique perspective on race-based medicine, which I then publish on this blog.

I invite all of you to comment on this issue. If you wish to be interviewed on this subject, please contact me. I can be reached at news at envisionsolutionsnow dot com.

Interview Subject: Dr. Richard Allen Williams

About Dr. Williams: Dr. Williams is founder of the Association of Black Cardiologists and professor of medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine. In 1987, Dr. Williams established the Minority Health Institute, which is designed to improve health care for African Americans and other minorities. Black Enterprise magazine named Dr. Williams one of the 100 best doctors in America in 2001.

Read the rest of this entry »

. . . at HealthyConcerns.com.