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CDC and Press Validate CFS
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CFIDS Association president and CEO Kim McCleary moderates the press event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
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Coverage of Press Conference Is Phenomenal!
The press conference held Friday to announce the CFS public awareness campaign was a triumphant success. The CFIDS Association and our PR firm, Fleishman Hillard, worked hard to pitch stories to the media, and we were extremely successful in getting reporters lined up to cover CFS and the campaign. We were able to interest reporters from such prestigious news outlets as NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, NPR, Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters, HealthDay, U.S. News & World Report, Dow Jones Newswire, WebMD, International Medical News Group, Congressional Quarterly and others. While many reporters were in the room, many more listened to the press conference on the National Press Club’s telecom system, and still others tuned in to the CDC’s audio webcast of the press event to file their stories.
Of course, getting reporters to cover the event is only half the battle. The number, tone and content of the articles they file is the other challenge. So far, more than 100 stories have appeared in print, broadcast and online media. And to some degree, the headlines alone signal a shift in attitudes that the CFS community has been waiting two decades to see, and that we will be monitoring carefully to determine how broad and truly significant the shift is. Regardless, there is plenty of reason for celebration this week as story after story validates that CFS is a real biological illness, and that it’s a serious public health concern.
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CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding addresses the media about the legitimacy and seriousness of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).
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The first major story to appear was Robert Bazell’s segment on NBC Nightly News. The story featured comments from CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding and CFS patient Jennie Spotila, a CFIDS Association board member whom the Association recommended to NBC for the story. If you haven’t seen it yet, please take a look at this exciting national coverage, which was seen by millions of viewers.
"Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Real: Health Officials Call on Doctors and Public to Take Disease Seriously" is WebMD’s headline. Reporter Todd Zwillich, who was at the press conference, writes, "Chronic fatigue syndrome—long doubted as a legitimate illness by many and largely ignored by the drug industry—got a boost from the federal government today. Buoyed by a spate of recent scientific findings tying the disorder to possible genetic and physiological causes, CDC officials said they want chronic fatigue syndrome to join the ranks of ‘real’ diseases."
"Wake Up and Smell Real Deal on Fatigue" is the headline of Marina Vataj’s article in the New York Post. "Sufferers of chronic fatigue syndrome have long been sick and tired of having their illness dismissed by others," Vataj writes. "Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a release not only legitimizing CFS as a real illness, but also launching a major awareness campaign. At least CFS patients won’t have to explain to skeptics anymore that, yes, they really do have an illness."
"CDC: Chronic fatigue syndrome real, brutal" is the headline that several publications used for Christine Dell’Amore’s UPI story. She writes, "The CDC Friday launched a campaign to advance knowledge of chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating illness that goes widely underdiagnosed in the United States." The story continues, "Experts believe only 20 percent of CFS sufferers get diagnosed, partly due to the disease’s lack of credibility and a lingering belief that it is psychological, and somehow imagined. . . . ‘That debate raged for 20 years, and now it’s over,’ said Dr. Anthony Komaroff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School."
"Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: The CDC Says It’s a Big Problem," is the U.S. News & World Report headline. Reporter Sarah Baldauf, who attended the press conference via phone hookup, goes on to quote CDC Director Julie Gerberding: "The most important thing to understand is that the fatigue component creates a significant disability." This and other articles point out the need for medical professionals to take the illness seriously and be more diligent about diagnosis because "it’s believed that early detection is related to better outcomes and greater likelihood of improvement."
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CFS patient and CFIDS Association board member Adrianne Ryan shares the moving story of her battle with the illness.
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The New York Times was just one paper that picked up the Reuters story filed Friday. "Chronic fatigue syndrome, once thought by some doctors to be a psychological problem or even an excuse for malingerers, is a real disease that affects more than a million Americans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday." This article (and many other stories) goes on to discuss symptoms and diagnosis, thereby educating the public about these important topics.
Local TV stations across the country also picked up the story. "Government Finally Acknowledges Chronic Fatigue Syndrome," "Tired? It May Be a Sign of Something Serious" and "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Often Misunderstood" are just a few of the headlines for the many stories that appeared on local TV stations. CBS 3 in Philadelphia, NBC 6 in Miami and 13WHAM in Rochester did terrific stories that are still available as video clips on their websites, and we encourage you to take a look soon, before those segments are no longer available.
This is just a small sampling of the stories that have appeared in the past few days.
Please visit the media coverage section of our campaign website frequently to access media coverage since we are updating this section daily.
The CFIDS Association has been working for more than three years to bring this $4.5 million public awareness campaign to fruition, not only securing the government contract to implement the campaign, but organizing the press conference and managing the development of campaign materials including the television, radio and print PSAs, print ad (see People magazine on newsstands now), patient brochure and CFS toolkit for health care professionals. Association president and CEO Kimberly McCleary moderated the press conference. For more information on the press conference, go to http://www.cfids.org/sparkcfs/press-conference.asp. To read Kim’s perspective on this historic event, please read this month’s "From the Desk of Kim McCleary."
If you want to see the seven-minute segment of the press conference that was sent to media outlets across the country as a video news release for their use in developing stories, this video clip is still available at http://www.cfids.org/sparkcfs/press-conference.asp.
Look for much more coverage of the campaign, including photos from the press conference, in the fall issue of the CFIDS Chronicle, which is headed to press in the next few days.
And don’t miss these related stories:
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Camera crews line up to cover this milestone event in the first national awareness campaign to educate the public and health care professionals about CFS.
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