By being prepared prior to your media outreach and interviews, you’ll have an advantage as you provide a great service to people in pain through consistently communicating key messages and debunking myths perpetuated in the media. Print and Internet media offer the best platforms for detail-heavy information, whereas television and radio are best at conveying the emotional angle to pain management issues. The goal of this section is to provide you with the basic background information and tools to get started on your pain management media relations campaign. The section also includes a number of sample tools and resources that you can use to expand your knowledge of pain media advocacy.The media provide a powerful vehicle to convey your key messages. You are an expert in your personal or professional pain experience. Reporters rely on people like you to help them illustrate the severity of important issues. While sitting in a powerful position, research has shown that reporters can be, oftentimes, unprepared and untrained to cover complex health stories. One survey showed that half (49.7%) of respondents reported it was sometimes easy and sometimes difficult to understand key health issues, and 31% found it often or nearly always difficult to do.* In terms of statistics, which are central components of many health stories, 51.3% of respondents reported that it was sometimes easy or sometimes difficult to interpret statistical data, and 27.4% found it often or nearly always difficult. More than three-quarters of respondents (83%) reported that they had no training to cover health topics. Similarly, a national survey of journalists and news executives found that only 12% of reporters covering health care are viewed as “extremely prepared” and 43% are viewed as “prepared” to cover health care issues.** [Sources: *Voss, M. 2002. Checking the pulse: Midwestern reporters’ opinions on their ability to report health care news. Am J Pub Health 92(7):1158–1160; ** Foundation for American Communications, 2002]
Emergency physicians have the expertise and the tools to treat a person in the midst of a pain crisis, but those with chronic...
