"Here Comes the Pitch!!"

Regular visitors to my little ol' blog here may have noticed a series of posts in which were listed a wide variety of health-related blogs. Before you think I've gone mad and conducted endless research into collecting all these sources, think again.

The Bulldog Reporter, according to SourceWatch, "is a publication that helps 'PR professionals increase media coverage through smarter pitching.' It is published by the Infocom Group, which pays journalists to make presentations before PR professionals, providing inside advise on how to better pitch and place stories and to cultivate relationships between PR professionals and journalists."

The Bulldog Reporter's Inside Health Media acknowledges that social media (aka blogs) has risen as an influential media source to consumers of health services and products. "Inside Health Media’s huge new blog directory gives PR pros an inside guide to influential bloggers covering health, medicine and fitness."

Of course when I first learned about this massive list, I was curious to see who was on it. Imagine how tickled I was to find that Brass and Ivory and the Carnival of MS Bloggers were listed. Which led me to think - other health bloggers might be interested to know if they too were on 'the list.

Keep in mind that Inside Health Media is hoping to provide a resource useful for PR pitches. But this isn't going to help much if the PR folks don't actually spend a little time getting to know on what subjects each blogger writes.

Yesterday, I received a pleasant-enough PR pitch to write about HPV testing.

Hi Lisa--

It's National Women's Health Week and I've been trying to spread the word about HPV and its link to cervical cancer. I wanted to give you a heads up about the HPV Test in case you'd be interested in writing a post about it.

The pap alone is not foolproof in detecting HPV-- it can miss up to half of the time! But when combined with the pap, the HPV Test is virtually 100% accurate in identifying women at risk for cervical cancer.

There are some good patient testimonial videos at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DigeneHPVtest

And more information about the test at http://www.thehpvtest.com/

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Now I believe that this person come to me by googling "women's health." And seeing as I've never written specifically about "women's health" it is evident that the only reason I came up on her search was due to the category of "women's health" on the IHM Blog list. But that didn't stop her from pitching the idea to me.

I'm not completely opposed to such things - it's just that there are other bloggers who might be more equipped to speak on this matter. A couple come to might immediately including Diane of A Stellarlife.

So here I am posting the message about including the links. But I'm also going to post some relevant articles related to this. Here goes:

From April 2008:

• QIAGEN Focuses New HPV Test Ad Campaign on Real-Life Story of Woman’s Escape from Cervical Cancer
• The Digene® HPV Test
• Watchful Waiting Best After HPV Test?
• Pap plus HPV tests can bring confusing results
  Women with positive findings need repeat tests to assess risk, experts say
• Third Wave seeks pre-market approval for HPV testing technology

From October 2007:

• Study: HPV more accurate than Pap smear
• Is HPV Testing Better Than the Pap Smear?
  As a screen for cervical neoplasia, HPV testing showed advantages over the Pap smear.
• New Test for HPV

From 2003:

• FDA Approves Expanded Use of HPV Test

From 1999:

• HPV Testing in the Evaluation of the Minimally Abnormal Papanicolaou Smear

From CDC:

• Genital HPV Infection - CDC Fact Sheet
• HPV and Men - CDC Fact Sheet