Sources

At first glance this assignment seemed simple enough: find an online article and evaluate its sources. Easy-peasy. Eight articles later and I finally click on a headline that features an actual article with actual sources. The seven previous headlines had been nothing more than a paragraph of loose information with no sources cited at all. And these were in notable online publications: Time, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

I settled on an article in the New York Times: Do Workplace Wellness Programs Work? Usually Not by Austin Frakt and Aaron E. Carroll. As a member of my hospital's Wellness Committee I am heavily involved in our worksite wellness program, so an article declaring they don't work definitely caught my attention. Both Frakt and Carroll have strong backgrounds in public health, as cited in the article and Frakt’s bio page listed several of his peer-reviewed publications. Within the article there were numerous sources cited including the Kaiser Family Foundation, the RAND Corporation and PepsiCo (Red flag! Red flag!) (Frakt & Carroll, 2014).  The article itself I felt was slightly bias, basically claiming that wellness programs shift costs from employer to employee. Per Dr. Z’s instruction I donned my Sherlock Holmes detective hat and started investigating the trail of evidence on which this article was based.

I have heard of the Kaiser Family Foundation within my own work in public health and wasn’t surprised that as a source, they checked out. Their survey and its funding all appeared to be neutral.  The mission of the RAND Corporation is to “advance understanding of health and health behaviors and examines how the organization and financing of care affect costs, quality, and access. RAND's body of research—conducted primarily through the RAND Health division—includes innovative studies of health insurance, health care reform, health information technology, and women's health, as well as topical concerns such as obesity, complementary and alternative medicine, and PTSD in veterans and survivors of catastrophe.” (Workplace Wellness Programs Can Cut Chronic Illness Costs; Savings for Lifestyle Improvements Are Smaller, 2014)  A little wordy, but it certainly sounds official. I found the specific study that was referenced by Frakt and Carroll, and it was based on PepsiCo’s (Yes, as in Pepsi cola and Frito-Lay potato chips) Healthy Living Wellness Program.  PepsiCo was the sponsor of the study and two of its authors are PepsiCo employees. The study, even though it was sponsored by a huge junk food conglomerate, still backed up what Frakt and Carroll wrote –worksite wellness works in some ways, but not in all the ways it is intended.     

The potential impact of unrestricted web publishing is that anyone could put forth information in a format that seems credible and legitimate.  While the article I focused on for this blog post was based on credible findings and presented in a fairly unbiased manner information is only as good as the way in which it is presented.  Even if authors cite credible sources, if they do so in a way that shows only one perspective, just to get their point across, its nearly as bad as just making things up. Unrestricted web publishing, while leveling the playing field for people to voice their opinions and create positive social/political movements, also poses the risk spreading falsified information, where facts are cherry picked to suit the author’s motives (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2010).

 

Works Cited

Frakt, A., & Carroll, A. E. (2014, September 11). Do Workplaec Wellness PRograms Work? Usually Not . Retrieved from New York Times : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/upshot/do-workplace-wellness-programs-work-usually-not.html?_r=1&abt=0002&abg=0

Kovach, B., & Rosenstiel, T. (2010). Blur: HOw to know what's true in the age of information overload. New York: Bloomsbury.

Workplace Wellness Programs Can Cut Chronic Illness Costs; Savings for Lifestyle Improvements Are Smaller. (2014, January 6). Retrieved from RAND Corporation: http://www.rand.org/news/press/2014/01/06/index1.html