List date(s) this work was published or aired.
Three-part series: August 11, August 16, August 18, 2011
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
This series of three articles looked at the two biggest disease “killers” — cancer and heart disease — from three vantage points: new drugs in development, funding for research, and public profile/fundraising. Cancer far outstrips heart disease in all three areas. My story attempted to look at how drugs, money, and glory are intertwined and why the gains made in treating heart disease may soon fall behind cancer.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
For Part I, Drugs, I reviewed disease prevalence statistics, and relied on FDA documents and research papers to determine numbers of new drugs in development, approved, or unsuccessful. For Part II, Money, I requested financial information from the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, and the National Cancer Institute, and reviewed annual reports for the major cardio and cancer professional organizations. For Part III, Glory, I requested/reviewed annual reports for the major nonprofit groups, looked at estimated disease ‘costs’ according to the National Institutes of Health.
Explain types of human sources used.
I interviewed physicians and professional society leaders, the NHLBI director, economists, clinicians and scientists.
Results:
Cancer is outstripping cardiovascular disease when it comes to the ability to develop new drugs, get new drugs approved, get federal research funding, get fundraising dollars from the public, and draw volunteers from the community. My story suggests that this will have an impact in the years to come on the ability to find new treatments for both heart disease and cancer.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
N/A
Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
Keep your files organized! This was a lot of numbers and stats and I had to devise a complicated excel spreadsheet to keep track of what numbers I wanted to use, and whether I was comparing apples to apples.