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Public Education on Kidney Failure and Kidney Donation - How Media can Influence Awareness

Explore the impact of media on public education about kidney failure and donation, including traditional outlets like newspapers and television, as well as social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Learn about the trends in media and the importance of fact-checking in disseminating accurate information. Discover the challenges and opportunities in media coverage of sensitive issues and how it can influence public attitudes towards organ donation.

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Public Education on Kidney Failure and Kidney Donation - How Media can Influence Awareness

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  1. Public Education on Kidney Failure andKidney Donation - How Media can Influence Awareness

  2. What media means today • Newspapers, magazines • Television • Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter • Over The Top – Netflix, Amazon Prime

  3. Trends in media • A lot of what gets circulated on some forums is neither news nor credible opinion. • This disease has hit WhatsApp badly. • The impact of this can be gauged from the reach of the new media

  4. The arrival of fact-checking • This is true for organ donation and prevention of kidney disease. • What this indicates is that news organisations have to take the extra effort to not merely check the facts in their stories, but debunk myths and falsehood. • Fact-checking websites like Alt News are now active, but they focus mainly on politically sensitive content.

  5. Does media get it wrong? • Sometime ago, this sentence appeared in an editorial in a medical journal: • “It  is easy  to understand  that any negative  broadcasts concerning  such delicate matters as  brain death, organ trafficking,  or fairness in the access to transplantation  may adversely influence the public attitude towards  organ donation.”

  6. If it bleeds, should it lead? • This edit had nothing to do with current issues, such as the discussion on transplants in Tamil Nadu. • But it talks about the problem that arises from media coverage of sensitive issues, where information asymmetry already exists. • The editorial I quoted from was actually by R. Matesanz and B. Miranda of Spain, as part of a comment article in the journal Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation, in 1996.

  7. Why do we get it wrong? • The editorial writers further say, “We are not of the opinion that  polemic discussions concerning transplantation are  created by journals exclusively in an effort to promote  scandal or sensationalism: they ask pertinent questions, but  often report wrong or imprecise answers.”

  8. Can we shed some light? • The media in India is frequently manipulated to push the hidden agendas of a few, or to influence official policy, and in other instances, to confuse the public. • The only way to end this is for ethical sections among doctors, public health workers and officials to shine the light on facts.

  9. A recent case in point • Protocol breached in Tamil Nadu organ transplant case, says probe – report in The Hindu, September 3, 2018 • The inquiry officer has concluded that two outsourced staff of the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu (TRANSTAN) had violated norms, by allocating the kidney to a different patient, and shifting allocation to benefit recipients admitted to the Chennai hospitals.

  10. The Hindu wrote in an editorial • Organ transplants display a maturity curve over time, with a rise in the number of procedures improving outcomes and reducing costs. Heart and lung transplants are complicated procedures. Few Indian patients are willing to opt for one, compared to kidney and liver. Kidney and liver programmes have reached a high level of maturity, resulting in rising demand. Most of these organs go to citizens.

  11. So how do people react to media messages on donation? • This may sound counter-intuitive, but one study says detailed descriptions of deceased donors do not motivate people to support organ donation issues. • Identification of a prospective recipient of organ donation made people more favourably inclined. • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Paul Slovic et al, 2017

  12. Another Tamil Nadu example • The “Hithendran Effect”

  13. Politicians take note

  14. A ‘cycle of donations’ • A.P. Hithendran Memorial Trust says in the two years after his organs were donated, the families of 37 people including a 40-year old cardiothoracic surgeon came forward to donate • After the passage of a decade, however, it is less prominent.

  15. The reach of media • Facebook: in 2012, the social media forum announced that its 150 million users (at the time) had the option to indicate organ donor status on their “timeline” • On the first day of the new initiative, some 13,054 users updated their donor profile • Mainstream media remain influential too…

  16. Mainstream media numbers • Television can potentially reach about 197 million homes, although there are about 100 million that are still waiting to be connected (Broadcast Audience Research Council of India) • TV viewership in the country grew by 12% in 2017, compared to the previous year. • The top three English dailies in the country sell a total of about five million copies a day. • Newspaper websites such as www.thehindu.com

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