Rachul Christen, Caulfield Timothy
School of Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University, Paterson Hall 236, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada.
Faculty of Law and School of Public Health, Health Law Institute, University of Alberta, Office 468, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2H5, Canada.
Orphanet J Rare Dis. 2015 Aug 25;10:102. doi: 10.1186/s13023-015-0320-z.
Previous studies have demonstrated how the media has an influence on policy decisions and healthcare coverage. Studies of Canadian media have shown that news coverage often emphasizes and hypes certain aspects of high profile health debates. We hypothesized that in Canadian media coverage of access to healthcare issues about therapies and technologies including for rare diseases, the media would be largely sympathetic towards patients, thus adding to public debate that largely favors increased access to healthcare-even in the face of equivocal evidence regarding efficacy.
In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted a content analysis of 530 news articles about access to health therapies and technologies from 15 major Canadian newspapers over a 10-year period. Articles were analyzed for the perspectives presented in the articles and the types of reasons or arguments presented either for or against the particular access issue portrayed in the news articles.
We found that news media coverage was largely sympathetic towards increasing healthcare funding and ease of access to healthcare (77.4 %). Rare diseases and orphan drugs were the most common issues raised (22.6 %). Patients perspectives were often highlighted in articles (42.3 %). 96.8 % of articles discussed why access to healthcare needs to increase, and discussion that questioned increased access was only included in 33.6 % articles.
We found that news media favors a patient access ethos, which may contribute to a difficult policy-making environment.
先前的研究已经证明了媒体如何对政策决策和医疗保健覆盖范围产生影响。对加拿大媒体的研究表明，新闻报道经常强调和炒作备受瞩目的健康辩论的某些方面。我们假设，在加拿大媒体对包括罕见病治疗方法和技术在内的医疗保健获取问题的报道中，媒体会在很大程度上同情患者，从而加剧公众辩论，而这种辩论在很大程度上支持增加医疗保健的可及性——即使面对关于疗效的不明确证据。
为了验证这一假设，我们对15家加拿大主要报纸在10年期间发表的530篇关于医疗保健治疗方法和技术获取的新闻文章进行了内容分析。分析文章中呈现的观点以及支持或反对新闻文章中所描绘的特定获取问题的理由或论据的类型。
我们发现新闻媒体报道在很大程度上同情增加医疗保健资金和提高医疗保健可及性（77.4%）。罕见病和孤儿药是最常被提及的问题（22.6%）。文章中经常突出患者的观点（42.3%）。96.8%的文章讨论了为什么需要增加医疗保健的可及性，而质疑增加可及性的讨论仅包含在33.6%的文章中。
我们发现新闻媒体倾向于患者可及性的理念，这可能导致艰难的政策制定环境。
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