Newsflash: beware the marketing of paper towels

On behalf of Prue Power, Executive Director, AHHA……..

AHHA welcomes feedback on our media update service and is always interested in hearing users’ views on how it could be improved to meet their needs.

AHHA provides this free service to the health sector because we believe that sharing information on health issues can assist in improving health care.

AHHA does not endorse the content of releases, the same way that other media monitoring services, such as AAP do not. While we do a preliminary screen for content that is clearly more marketing than informative in nature, we do not assess the quality of the information contained in releases. Analysing the content of each release for potential biases and vested interest would require considerable resources and would make this service unviable.

AHHA does publish an edited weekly newsletter of current health news, AHHA notices and media releases, events and research of particular interest to our members and subscribers. This is called eHealthcare Brief and interested people can subscribe at http://www.aushealthcare.com.au/mailinglists.

AHHA also publishes a quarterly newsletter called Healthcare Brief which includes an editorial on major health care issues, notifications of AHHA news and events and invites contributions from members. Another publication which may be of interest to Croakey readers is our leading quarterly journal on health management and policy, Australian Health Review (AHR), a peer-reviewed journal covering crucial national and international health issues and questions. Both these publications are provided to AHHA members (subscription to AHR also available separately). Information about AHHA membership can be found at: http://www.aushealthcare.com.au/membership

The service is targeted to health groups and people with an interest in health, it is not aimed at a general consumer market and does not promote itself as a source of health information for the general public. We assume that people accessing the site will be able to assess the quality of information provided within media releases and make their own judgements, knowing the source of the media releases.

Of course all releases are biased, to the extent that they are representing particular interests within the health sector. We do not believe that excluding releases from groups with a commercial interest would serve the interests of our users. Many people and organisations which use this service are interested in information coming from profit-making organisations, even if it is selective and promotes their own interests.

To ensure that all users understand these issues, AHHA will ensure some additional information is included on the website and within our updates to clarify the parameters of the service and prevent any misunderstandings about its role.