APS Press Room
| For immediate release April 12, 2007 |
Contact: Chuck Weber (847) 705-1802 |
American Pain Society Honors West Virginia Journalists
Charleston Gazette’s “The Killer Cure” Series Wins APS Journalist Award
WASHINGTON, DC, May 3, 2007—The American Pain Society (APS) www.ampainsoc.org, has awarded the 2007 Kathleen M. Foley Journalist Award for excellence in reporting on pain and pain management to Tara Tuckwiller and Scott Finn for their series in the Charleston (WV) Gazette, called “The Killer Cure,” which reported on the dangers of methadone for pain treatment.
The award was announced at the annual scientific meeting of the American Pain Society. APS established the Foley Award in 2002 as one of its public awareness initiatives to support and promote the Decade of Pain Control and Research.
“We are pleased to honor Tara and Scott for their outstanding coverage that raised public awareness of potential risks associated with methadone treatment for pain,” said APS President Judith Paice, PhD, RN. “We hope this recognition shows that the pain community values the contributions of journalists who cover pain issues. Society benefits when journalistic coverage stimulates reforms to improve public safety, especially health care providers who depend on safe medications and correct prescribing information to help their patients,” said Paice.
The series revealed for the first time that methadone is a cause of death for more people nationwide than any other prescription narcotic. Tuckwiller and Finn also found the approved daily pain methadone dose could kill some patients. After Tuckwiller and Finn published their series, the FDA issued a public health advisory warning that methadone “can cause death” if not taken exactly as prescribed, and cut the approved dose for pain patients by more than half.
“We are honored to receive the American Pain Society’s Kathleen M. Foley Journalist Award,” Tuckwiller said. “In our series, we wanted to provide our readers with accurate information from physicians and researchers who specialize in pain management, who are knowledgeable about both methadone’s effectiveness and its potential dangers if not prescribed or taken correctly. We thank those pain management professionals for providing us with that reliable information, which ultimately was reflected in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new dosing and prescribing information for methadone.”
In addition to the APS Foley Award, “The Killer Cure,” was judged to be among the best health care reporting in America by the Association of Health Care Journalists, winning the organization’s top prize in the category of newspapers circulating fewer than 90,000 daily copies. The series was also one of two finalists named, among all newspapers in the nation, for the Public Service Reporting category of the Scripps Howard Foundation’s National Journalism Awards.
As the leading professional society devoted exclusively to pain, pain management and pain research, APS sponsors the Kathleen M. Foley Journalist Award to recognize excellence in reporting pain-related topics. The award is designed to honor the work of journalists whose coverage of events, scientific discoveries, patient care, issues and policies contribute to furthering public awareness and understanding of pain and pain-related issues.
The APS award is named for Dr. Foley in recognition of her contributions to furthering professional and public understanding about the need for effective cancer and end-of-life pain management. She is an attending neurologist for the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York and director of the Project on Death in America sponsored by the Open Society Institute.
Eligibility was limited to work published or broadcast from Jan.1, 2006 to March 1, 2007 by writers and reporters who receive at least 50 percent of their income from journalistic activity, either as an employee of an independent media outlet or a free-lancer.
Nominations were submitted by journalists and by APS members on behalf of specific journalists. The applications were judged by an independent panel of members of the APS Task Force on the Decade of Pain Control and Research.