“Overwhelmingly positive” and “a big draw” for students applying to graduate school is how Dana March, Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University, describes the response the Department has had to its newly launched journalism/media initiative. Entitled “the 2x2 project”, the efforthas as its main goal to translate emerging public health science in a clear and compelling way for a lay audience.

Vision For Translation

According to March, who also serves as the Editor-in-Chief, the project seeks to shape the public conversation around public health topics, and in the long term to shape policy consonant with the public health science. The inspiration for the project comes from Sandro Galea, the Department Chairman, who March called “a very gifted leader with a unique vision” and one who has made translation an expressed goal and integral part of the Epidemiology Department at Columbia.

Columbia As Epi Model

She called Columbia “what a department of epidemiology ought to be, an exciting place,  and a model for others to aspire to. And a completely unanticipated benefit of the program, says March, is the high level of interest being expressed by prospective students trying to decide which School of Public Health to attend.

Fellows Training

At the core of the project are the fellows hired each year to rotate through the different sections of the 2x2 project, and in so doing, get trained to become effective writers. Fellows are expected to learn to write in a clear and compelling way which engages an educated lay audience and gets them talking about the public health issues.

Bike Sharing Example

One example of this work is an article about New York City’s new bike-sharing program launched in May of this year. The article by PhD candidate Kathleen Bachynski focused on the disconnect between the new program’s touted health and fitness benefits and its failure to make provisions for renters to wear proven effective bike helmets. Bachynski reviewed the epidemiologic data on both safety and biking practices, including a study which found that 81% of bike share riders rode without helmets as compared to only 49% of riders using personal bikes. Recently, bike rental companies in New York have started renting sanitized helmets for their bike share riders, according to the 2x2 project website.

Celebrity Endorsements

According to March, there are “many ways to stoke the conversation”. Another example is the commentary written by Abdul El-Sayeed, a social epidemiologist medical student at Columbia who wrote an open letter to Lebron James encouraging him to drop his endorsements of Coca Cola and McDonald’s so as not to contribute further to childhood obesity. The commentary was widely circulated.

Training

The 2x2 project trains fellows by providing didactic sessions on journalism topics as well as offering several different types of articles they can write. These types include a roundup of news items of potential interest which the fellows and staff have identified by Friday of each week, commentaries on current issues, news analyses, reviews of books and movies, and brief items about news events or interesting statistics. Some of the topics covered to date include the ongoing challenges in reducing teen pregnancy, legalized marijuana, the abuse of prescription painkillers, misleading information about the causes of autism, and the profile of public health in popular music.

Editorial Independence

Although the 2x2 project is funded by the Department of Epidemiology, it is an editorially independent and separate entity, and the editors have “lots of latitude on what to cover”, according to March. The editors track the number of views which articles receive as well as the time spent at the site and how many persons share the content either on Facebook or on Twitter. Some of their articles have “gone viral”, and the editors are trying to be more strategic about their content by analyzing the popularity of the material presented. According to March, determining exactly what metrics to use in assessing the impact of the 2x2 project is not a straightforward matter when one considers the long term goal of the project to be shaping public health policy or action.

Responsibility To Translate

According to March, epidemiologists who work with colleagues both upstream on social causes of disease and more downstream on molecular mechanisms are in a unique position to translate public health science. “There is a real need to do what we are doing  which is trying to enhance the impact of our research by explaining it” she said, “and we have a responsibility to do so.”

Obstacles to Adoption

March told the Monitor she recognizes there are barriers to more widespread adoption of translation because the focus in academia remains on research work, on getting grant dollars, and on reputation inside as well as outside the university. “We need to shift what is valued”, she told the Monitor. She said Columbia is breaking new ground and that it opens up a whole set of challenges about how to succeed. She believes the epidemiology profession is at a critical juncture and that there is a real desire for what we are doing, for this lay translation of our work.

Staff and Fellows

In addition to March, other persons working on the 2x2 project are Abdul El-Sayeed, Karestan Koenen the editor emerita, Jordan Lite a writer, and Elaine Meyer a journalist. The Fellows selected in the first cohort last year were Josh Brooks, Larkan Callaghan, Arti Virkud, and Lauren Weisenfluh. The new cohort includes Kathleen Bachynski, June Kim, Patches Magarro, and Chris Tait.

To read more about the 2x2 project, visit

www.the2x2project.org

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