Health news can be confusing and overwhelming. The information can be contradictory and often based on limited or incomplete evidence. It takes a lot of solid, well-done studies to change medical thinking or establish new treatments.
Keeping up with the latest in health policy news is key to staying informed and assessing how it might affect your family’s care. KFF’s Policy Tracker is your resource for the latest updates and analysis on a wide variety of health policy topics.
The KFF Health News staff is here to help you make sense of the many conflicting reports on health and medicine. Whenever possible, read the original source of the study that’s behind the news you’re reading. Academic research journals typically carefully scrutinize their work before publishing, and you can often find a study’s results in full online for free (though you may need to pay for access to some articles).
Also consider how the study was conducted. Was it a small sample size or a large one? Randomized clinical trials involving thousands of people are best at establishing whether a treatment really works. Studies that involve lab animals or a single person can be informative, but they won’t necessarily translate to real-world outcomes in humans. Personal stories are also interesting, but they don’t prove anything about the safety or efficacy of any given treatment. Ultimately, it’s your doctor’s job to weigh all of this evidence and help you understand how it applies to your family.