Tuesday, July 26, 2016

'Clone sisters' of Dolly the sheep are alive and kicking

'Clone sisters' of Dolly the sheep are alive and kicking

Weight loss support seeking on Twitter: the impact of weight on follow back rates and interactions

 2016 Jul 21. [Epub ahead of print]

Weight loss support seeking on twitter: the impact of weight on follow back rates and interactions.

Author information

  • 1Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA, 01655, USA. Christine.May@umassmed.edu.
  • 2Division of Epidemiology of Chronic Diseases and Vulnerable Populations, Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA. Christine.May@umassmed.edu.
  • 3Division of Epidemiology of Chronic Diseases and Vulnerable Populations, Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA.
  • 4Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA.
  • 5Division of Addiction, Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, USA.
  • 6Division of Preventative and Behavioral Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, 55 Lake Avenue North, Worcester, MA, 01655, USA.
  • 7Division of Medical Toxicology, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA.

Abstract

People seek weight loss support on online social networks, but little is known about how to build a supportive community. We created four Twitter accounts portraying women interested in weight loss (two obese, two normal weight/overweight) and followed health care professional and peer accounts for 2-5 weeks. We examined follow back rates, interactions, and organic follows from professionals and peers by weight status. Follow back rates did not differ by weight status when following professionals (6.8 % normal weight/overweight vs 11.0 % for obese; p = 0.4167) or peers (6.7 % for normal weight/overweight vs 10.8 % for obese; p = 0.1548). Number of interactions and organic followers also did not differ by weight status. Peers interacted with study accounts significantly more than professionals (p = 0.0138), but interactions were infrequent. Women seeking weight loss support on Twitter may need to be present for more than 5 weeks to build an interactive weight loss community.

Monday, July 25, 2016

"They are the joy-killers: the destroyers of summer, determined to prove that the wild world is a plot against humanity."

Why all civilised people should love wasps

All gardeners, and all readers, have reason to thank them


"Dom Perignon, Pimms, Carling Black Label, Coca-Cola — one’s as good as the other, so far as they’re concerned. Even if they don’t manage to drown in the stuff, they spoil the taste for drinkers by creating panic out of all proportion to their size. They destroy the ardour of al-fresco lovers in an instant. They are the joy-killers: the destroyers of summer, determined to prove that the wild world is a plot against humanity."

The Diagnostic Concordance of Whole Slide Imaging and Light Microscopy

Edward GoacherBScRebecca RandellPhDBethany WilliamsMBBSDarren TreanorMB, PhD, FRCPath
From the Faculty of Medicine and Health (Mr Goacher and Dr Treanor) and the School of Healthcare (Dr Randell), University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England; and the Department of Histopathology, Leeds Teaching Hospitals, National Health Service Trust, Leeds (Ms Williams and Dr Treanor).
Reprints: Darren Treanor, MB, BSc, PhD, FRCPath, Department of Pathology, Leeds Teaching Hospitals, National Health Service Trust, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS9 7TF, England (email: ).
Context.—Light microscopy (LM) is considered the reference standard for diagnosis in pathology. Whole slide imaging (WSI) generates digital images of cellular and tissue samples and offers multiple advantages compared with LM. Currently, WSI is not widely used for primary diagnosis. The lack of evidence regarding concordance between diagnoses rendered by WSI and LM is a significant barrier to both regulatory approval and uptake.
Objective.—To examine the published literature on the concordance of pathologic diagnoses rendered by WSI compared with those rendered by LM.
Data Sources.—We conducted a systematic review of studies assessing the concordance of pathologic diagnoses rendered by WSI and LM. Studies were identified following a systematic search of Medline (Medline Industries, Mundelein, Illinois), Medline in progress (Medline Industries), EMBASE (Elsevier, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and the Cochrane Library (Wiley, London, England), between 1999 and March 2015.
Conclusions.—Thirty-eight studies were included in the review. The mean diagnostic concordance of WSI and LM, weighted by the number of cases per study, was 92.4%. The weighted mean κ coefficient between WSI and LM was 0.75, signifying substantial agreement. Of the 30 studies quoting percentage concordance, 18 (60%) showed a concordance of 90% or greater, of which 10 (33%) showed a concordance of 95% or greater. This review found evidence to support a high level of diagnostic concordance. However, there were few studies, many were small, and they varied in quality, suggesting that further validation studies are still needed.

Ethics of the Physician's Role in Health-Care Cost Control: AOA Critical Issues

 2016 Jul 20;98(14):e58. doi: 10.2106/JBJS.15.00889.

Ethics of the Physician's Role in Health-Care Cost Control: AOA Critical Issues.

Author information

  • 1NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases, New York, NY Joseph.Bosco@nyumc.org.
  • 2NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases, New York, NY.

Abstract

The United States health-care expenditure is rising precipitously. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, in 2025, at our current rate of increased spending, 25% of the gross domestic product will be allocated to health care. Our per-capita spending on health care also far exceeds that of any other industrialized country. Health-care costs must be addressed if our country is to remain competitive in the global marketplace and to maintain its financial solvency. If unchecked, the uncontrolled rise in health-care expenditures will not only affect our capacity to provide our patients with high-quality care but also threaten the ability of our nation to compete economically on the global stage. This is not hyperbole but fiscal reality.As physicians, we are becoming increasingly familiar with the economics impacting health-care policy. Thus, we are in a unique position to control the cost of health care. This includes an increased reliance on creating and adhering to evidence-based guidelines. We can do this and still continue to respect the primacy of patient welfare and the right of patients to act in their own self-interest. However, as evidenced by the use of high-volume centers of excellence, each strategy adapted to control costs must be vetted and must be monitored for its unintended ethical consequences.The solution to this complex problem must involve the input of all of the health-care stakeholders, including the patients, payers, and providers. Physicians ought to play a role in designing and executing a remedy. After all, we are the ones who best understand medicine and whose moral obligation is to the welfare of our patients.

Transbronchial Lung Cryobiopsy for Interstitial Lung Disease Diagnosis: A Perspective From Members of the Pulmonary Pathology Society

Kirtee Raparia MDDara L. Aisner MDTimothy Craig Allen MD, JDMary Beth Beasley MDAlain Borczuk MDPhilip T. Cagle ,MDVera Capelozzi MD, PhDSanja Dacic MD, PhDLida P. Hariri MD, PhDKeith M. Kerr BSc, MB, ChB, FRCPath, FRCPE;Sylvie Lantuejoul MD, PhDMari Mino-Kenudson MDNatasha Rekhtman MD, PhDAnja C. Roden MDSinchita Roy-Chowdhuri MD, PhDLynette Sholl MDMaxwell L. Smith MDEric Thunnissen MD, PhDMing Sound Tsao MDYasushi YatabeMD, PhD
From the Department of Pathology, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois (Dr Raparia); the Department of Pathology, University of Colorado Cancer Center, Denver (Dr Aisner); the Department of Pathology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (Dr Allen); the Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York (Dr Beasley); the Department of Pathology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York (Drs Borczuk and Cagle); the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas (Dr Cagle); the Department of Pathology, University of Sao Paulo Medical School, Sao Paulo, Brazil (Dr Capelozzi); the Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Dr Dacic); the Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston (Drs Hariri and Mino-Kenudson); the Department of Pathology, Aberdeen University Medical School and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Foresterhill, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom (Dr Kerr); the Department of Biopathology, Centre Léon Bérard, Lyon, and J Fourier University–INSERM U 823-Institut A Bonniot, Grenoble, France (Dr Lantuejoul); the Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York (Dr Rekhtman); the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic Rochester, Rochester, Minnesota (Dr Roden); the Department of Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston (Dr Roy-Chowdhuri); the Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts (Dr Sholl); the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, Scottsdale, Arizona (Dr Smith); the Department of Pathology, VU Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Dr Thunnissen); the Department of Pathology, University Health Network, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Dr Tsao); and the Department of Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics, Aichi Cancer Center, Nagoya, Japan (Dr Yatabe).
Reprints: Timothy Craig Allen, MD, JD, Department of Pathology, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555 (email:).
Transbronchial lung cryobiopsy involves using a cryoprobe rather than forceps to obtain a bronchoscopic biopsy. Recent studies have shown that transbronchial cryobiopsy provides a larger specimen than conventional transbronchial forceps biopsy, and that the interobserver agreement in the interpretation of cryobiopsy specimens is comparable to that of a surgical lung biopsy. This is encouraging, and transbronchial lung cryobiopsy clearly has a role in the workup and diagnosis of interstitial lung diseases. However, very few patients who have been studied underwent both transbronchial lung cryobiopsy and surgical lung biopsy, and the available data suggest that the diagnostic accuracy of cryobiopsy may not be similar to that of surgical lung biopsy. Further study is needed before transbronchial lung biopsy can be recommended as a replacement for surgical lung biopsy.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Thinking, Public and Private: Intellectuals in the Time of the Public

Thinking, Public and Private: Intellectuals in the Time of the Public

Ready for a Risk Stratification Robot?

 2016 Jun 22. doi: 10.1111/acem.13038. [Epub ahead of print]

Ready for a Risk Stratification Robot?

Author information

  • 1Department of Emergency Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Medical Center Boulevard, Winston-Salem, NC 27157.

Abstract

Care patterns for Emergency Department (ED) patients with acute chest pain are changing rapidly. Just a few years ago patients at very-low risk for acute coronary syndrome (ACS) were routinely admitted to the hospital or placed in an observation unit for serial troponins (cTn) and stress testing or computed tomography (CT) coronary angiography. These conservative practices were fueled by American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guidelines, malpractice fears, and the TIMI and GRACE Scores which lack sensitivity and are not designed for ED use.1-4 Since that time, the derivation and validation of accelerated diagnostic protocols (ADPs), has led to low-risk patients being discharged from EDs with greater frequency. 

"The fat is in the fire in God’s Own Country, with the Kerala government planning to tax junk food at 14.5%."

Kerala’s Fat Tax: Can it work? What will it take to win the fight against obesity?


"The fat is in the fire in God’s Own Country, with the Kerala government planning to tax junk food at 14.5%.
The ‘fat tax’ will be levied on burgers, pizzas and processed foods served in organised fast-food outlets, including international brands such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Domino’s.
The idea is to try and slash fast-rising obesity rates in the state. Right now, 28.1% of women and 17.8% of men in the state are either overweight or obese, putting Kerala a close second to India’s most obese state, Punjab. (Here, 29.9% of women and 18.2% of men are either overweight or obese)."

Pathologists "have enrolled in social media...but have not fully engaged...They ask ‘that’s it? So what now?'’’ This.

Michael J. Misialek MD; Timothy Craig Allen MD, JD
From the Department of Pathology, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Newton, Massachusetts (Dr Misialek);
and the Department of Pathology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (Dr Allen).


"As a result of both individual and group efforts, including the College of American Pathologists’ promotion of social media in its annual meetings and its educational endeavors, many pathologists have enjoyed social media as a tool for sharing professional insights, educating about disease, and influencing policy. Many other pathologists have enrolled in social media, perhaps out of curiosity or at the prompting of colleagues, but have not fully engaged, or they initially engaged but did not see enough value to follow up. They ask 'that’s it? So what now?'’’ 

Heavy Moms Likelier to Pile Food on Kids' Plates: Study

Heavy Moms Likelier to Pile Food on Kids' Plates: Study



"FRIDAY, July 15, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Obese and overweight moms seem to serve their kids more food at meals, potentially boosting their risk for childhood obesity.
University of Florida researchers asked mothers to describe their level of hunger and that of their 3- to 6-year-olds before meals. Twenty-nine children took part in the study."

Defining sarcopenic obesity is key to its effective treatment



Defining sarcopenic obesity is key to its effective treatment


"Sarcopenic obesity is the combination of low muscle mass and high fat mass. Tending to be more common in older adults owing to natural changes associated with aging, sarcopenic obesity has the potential to become of increasing public health concern. In addition, evidence suggests that older adults with sarcopenic obesity have increased risks of mobility issues, metabolic disease, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and mortality. However, limited data in terms of prevention and treatment are available, largely owing to differences in definition and assessment."

"...the Turkish military has long been a strong supporter of secular government and a critic of government corruption."



Why the attempted coup in Turkey matters to the U.S.


"Robert Pearson, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, said that the Turkish military has long been a strong supporter of secular government and a critic of government corruption."

"Russia is many things, but if Russian power can keep France safe, Hollande is likely to snatch at it."

Why France is Ground Zero in the war on terror

"It may be best for President Obama’s political legacy not to send combat troops back to Iraq, but he is buying that legacy with French lives.  And Belgian ones, for that matter.  Turks too.  And Syrians above all.  
Almost certainly, France will now abandon its subordination to the United States in the ISIS war.  It will abandon its efforts to get rid of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and abandon its efforts to rid the Levant of Russian and Iranian influence.  Now it needs to destroy the beast.  If America will not step up and lead the campaign, Russia is more than willing.  The next step might well be a tacit revival of the old French-Russian alliance of a century ago, if not in Europe than in the Middle East.  Russia is many things, but if Russian power can keep France safe, Hollande is likely to snatch at it."

Beyond Primates: Research Protections and Animal Moral Value

 2016 Jul;46(4):28-30. doi: 10.1002/hast.602.

Beyond Primates: Research Protections and Animal Moral Value.

Abstract

Should monkeys be used in painful and often deadly infectious disease research that may save many human lives? This is the challenging question that Anne Barnhill, Steven Joffe, and Franklin G. Miller take on in their carefully argued and compelling article "The Ethics of Infection Challenges in Primates." The authors offer a nuanced and even-handed position that takes philosophical worries about nonhuman primate moral status seriously and still appreciates the very real value of such research for human welfare. Overall, they argue for an extension and revision of the recommendations regarding chimpanzee research offered by the Institute of Medicine in 2011; the practical upshot of their argument would allow for infection challenge research for promising interventions for Ebola and Marburg virus diseases but not for smallpox or the common cold. The IOM recommendations regarding chimpanzee research put in motion an exceptionalist policy for this great ape population. Barnhill and colleagues' proposal would enlarge the scope of that exceptionalism to embrace NHPs other than great apes. But is such exceptionalism warranted? It is not obvious to me either that the more sophisticated capacities of a species as a whole give it greater ethical protections or that less intellectually or socially sophisticated animals ought to therefore receive less protection when it comes to painful experimental interventions.

Liquid Biopsy in Lung Cancer: A Perspective From Members of the Pulmonary Pathology Society

 2016 May 19. [Epub ahead of print]

Liquid Biopsy in Lung Cancer: A Perspective From Members of the Pulmonary Pathology Society.

Author information

  • 1From the Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts (Drs Sholl and Vivero); the Department of Pathology, University of Colorado Cancer Center, Denver (Dr Aisner); the Department of Pathology, The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston (Dr Allen); the Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York (Dr Beasley); the Department of Pathology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York, and the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas (Dr Cagle); the Department of Pathology, University of Sao Paulo Medical School, Sao Paulo, Brazil (Dr Capelozzi); the Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Dr Dacic); the Department of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston (Drs Hariri and Mino-Kenudson); the Department of Pathology, Aberdeen University Medical School and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Foresterhill, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom (Dr Kerr); the Department of Biopathology, Centre Léon Bérard, Lyon, France, and J Fourier University-INSERM U 823-Institut A Bonniot, Grenoble, France (Dr Lantuejoul); the Department of Pathology, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois (Dr Raparia); the Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York (Dr Rekhtman); the Department of Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston (Dr Roy-Chowdhuri); the Department of Pathology, VU Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Dr Thunnissen); the Department of Pathology, University Health Network/Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (Dr Tsao); and the Department of Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics, Aichi Cancer Center, Nagoya, Japan (Dr Yatabe).

Abstract

Liquid biopsy has received extensive media coverage and has been called the holy grail of cancer detection. Attempts at circulating tumor cell and genetic material capture have been progressing for several years, and recent financially and technically feasible improvements of cell capture devices, plasma isolation techniques, and highly sensitive polymerase chain reaction- and sequencing-based methods have advanced the possibility of liquid biopsy of solid tumors. Although practical use of circulating RNA-based testing has been hindered by the need to fractionate blood to enrich for RNAs, the detection of circulating tumor cells has profited from advances in cell capture technology. In fact, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved one circulating tumor cell selection platform, the CellSearch System. Although the use of liquid biopsy in a patient population with a genomically defined solid tumor may potentially be clinically useful, it currently does not supersede conventional pretreatment tissue diagnosis of lung cancer. Liquid biopsy has not been validated for lung cancer diagnosis, and its lower sensitivity could lead to significant diagnostic delay if liquid biopsy were to be used in lieu of tissue biopsy. Ultimately, notwithstanding the enthusiasm encompassing liquid biopsy, its clinical utility remains unproven.

The Federalist: ObamaCare Didn’t Work, So Let’s Completely Socialize Medicine


Obama: ObamaCare Didn’t Work, So Let’s Completely Socialize Medicine


President Obama implicitly acknowledges ObamaCare has failed—and lays the cards on the table for what we knew was going to be his next step.


"ObamaCare was ultimately designed to fail. Its basic contradiction is that it was founded on a fundamental hostility toward the entire idea of health insurance, which Obama and the Democrats view as inherently parasitical. Yet the Affordable Care Act is a scheme to require mandatory, universal purchase of the very product they despise.
How do you square that circle? Simple. ObamaCare mandated and subsidized the purchase of health insurance, but on terms that obviously made it unfeasible over the long term. Obama did so on the presumption that Democrats would be able to come back later and blame the fiasco on those greedy private insurers, then go for what they really wanted all along: a “public option” modeled on Medicare, as a further stepping stone toward “single payer,” i.e., socialized medicine."

"The most important rewards of being a parent aren’t your children’s grades and trophies..."

A Manifesto Against ‘Parenting’

Caring for children shouldn’t be like carpentry, with a finished product in mind. We should grow our children, like gardeners



"The most important rewards of being a parent aren’t your children’s grades and trophies—or even their graduations and weddings. They come from the moment-by-moment physical and psychological joy of being with this particular child, and in that child’s moment-by-moment joy in being with you.
Instead of valuing “parenting,” we should value “being a parent.” Instead of thinking about caring for children as a kind of work, aimed at producing smart or happy or successful adults, we should think of it as a kind of love. Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose. Love’s purpose is not to shape our beloved’s destiny but to help them shape their own."

The Diagnostic Concordance of Whole Slide Imaging and Light Microscopy: A Systematic Review

Edward GoacherBScRebecca RandellPhDBethany WilliamsMBBSDarren TreanorMB, PhD, FRCPath
From the Faculty of Medicine and Health (Mr Goacher and Dr Treanor) and the School of Healthcare (Dr Randell), University of Leeds, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England; and the Department of Histopathology, Leeds Teaching Hospitals, National Health Service Trust, Leeds (Ms Williams and Dr Treanor).
Reprints: Darren Treanor, MB, BSc, PhD, FRCPath, Department of Pathology, Leeds Teaching Hospitals, National Health Service Trust, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS9 7TF, England (email: ).
Context.—Light microscopy (LM) is considered the reference standard for diagnosis in pathology. Whole slide imaging (WSI) generates digital images of cellular and tissue samples and offers multiple advantages compared with LM. Currently, WSI is not widely used for primary diagnosis. The lack of evidence regarding concordance between diagnoses rendered by WSI and LM is a significant barrier to both regulatory approval and uptake.
Objective.—To examine the published literature on the concordance of pathologic diagnoses rendered by WSI compared with those rendered by LM.
Data Sources.—We conducted a systematic review of studies assessing the concordance of pathologic diagnoses rendered by WSI and LM. Studies were identified following a systematic search of Medline (Medline Industries, Mundelein, Illinois), Medline in progress (Medline Industries), EMBASE (Elsevier, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and the Cochrane Library (Wiley, London, England), between 1999 and March 2015.
Conclusions.—Thirty-eight studies were included in the review. The mean diagnostic concordance of WSI and LM, weighted by the number of cases per study, was 92.4%. The weighted mean κ coefficient between WSI and LM was 0.75, signifying substantial agreement. Of the 30 studies quoting percentage concordance, 18 (60%) showed a concordance of 90% or greater, of which 10 (33%) showed a concordance of 95% or greater. This review found evidence to support a high level of diagnostic concordance. However, there were few studies, many were small, and they varied in quality, suggesting that further validation studies are still needed.

"The more overweight you are, the more likely you are to die."

This is how much time obesity cuts off your life





"The more overweight you are, the more likely you are to die.

Put another way: Being overweight or obese is associated with a higher risk of dying prematurely than being a healthier weight — and the risk increases with additional pounds, according to a new international study led by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Cambridge in the U.K. Researchers joined forces in 2013 to establish the Global BMI (Body Mass Index) Mortality Collaboration, which included more than 500 investigators from over 300 global institutions.
........................................

Looking at specific causes of death, the study found that, for each five-unit increase in BMI (from, say, 30 to 35) — body mass index is measured by a formula that divides your body weight your height — the corresponding increases in risk were 49% for cardiovascular mortality, 38% for respiratory disease mortality and 19% for cancer mortality. That means these people are 49%, 38% and 19% more likely to die earlier than a person who has a healthy body weight."

Friday, July 15, 2016

The Greatest Generation

Today is the one year anniversary of my father's death.  I miss him.

Father, son from Texas among France truck attack victims

Father, son from Texas among France truck attack victims

"A father and son with ties to Prosper and the Austin area died during Thursday night's attack in France that left 84 people dead with 25 on life support and 52 in critical condition.
Sean Copeland, 51, and his son Brodie, 11, were killed in what French authorities have described as a terror attack, family friend Jess Davis said."

"Smoking Is Sóóó ... Sandals and White Socks": Co-Creation of a Dutch Anti-Smoking Campaign to Change Social Norms

 2016 Jun 29:1-8. [Epub ahead of print]

"Smoking Is Sóóó ... Sandals and White Socks": Co-Creation of a Dutch Anti-Smoking Campaign to Change Social Norms.

Author information

  • 1a Department of Dutch Studies , University of Amsterdam.
  • 2b Department of Language, Literature and Communication , Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
  • 3c Department of Communication Science , Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Abstract

This article considers co-creation as a new persuasive strategy in health campaigns. Co-creation enables target audience members to become active campaign producers. A recent Dutch anti-smoking campaign applied co-creation, inviting the target audience to complete the slogan "smoking is sóóó . . . " with something outdated on social networking sites (SNSs) like Facebook and Twitter to stress non-smoking as the new social norm. From a corpus-linguistic perspective, we investigated how the slogans from the target audience resonated with or deviated from the campaign's original message. In general, the target audience slogans followed the campaign's approach, but on the SNSs, differences were found regarding the valence, type of utterance, and domain to which smoking was compared. The target audience frequently compared smoking with other (inter)personal social norms. Co-creation thus provides the target audience with an opportunity to disseminate campaign messages from their own perspective, but at the same time a co-creation strategy risks diluting the intended campaign message.

"But he saw another investigator vomiting and crying after seeing the mutilated bodies upstairs."

Horrifying details of the Bataclan Theatre massacre revealed


"'There are people decapitated, swollen and disemboweled. There are signs of sexual acts committed against women and knife cuts to genitals. If I am not mistaken, some of the eyes of certain people have been removed,' he answered.
The witness was later asked by Fenech how he’d come to learn of the acts of barbarism. He answered that he himself had only witnessed bodies struck by bullets, on the ground floor.
But he saw another investigator vomiting and crying after seeing the mutilated bodies upstairs."

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Kupura

Tales of a child bride: 'My father sold me for 12 cows'

When she was 12, Grace was abducted and then raped and beaten every day for 11 months.




"Kupura is so prevalent in the region that when a girl disappears, her parents will suspect what has happened. But rather than calling the police, they will seek the man out not to rescue their child, but to negotiate the dowry - or bride price - in cattle."

HT:SD