Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Q: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services awarded a no-bid contract to the Missouri Primary Care Association. The agreement will pay the organization $125,000 a year to focus on getting more adolescents to receive at least five vaccines, including influenza, hepatitis A and HPV. Contract talks began before health officials warned last week that a hepatitis A outbreak in the state could grow worse if it spreads to urban areas. Health officials say the state has recorded 414 cases of the virus since September 2017. In previous years, only about 10 cases were reported annually.

A: State awards contract to boost hepatitis A vaccination rate.
****
Q: None of the stories we reviewed gave readers sufficient information on the cost of the research scans used in the study. This story includes a comment from a researcher saying that increased use of this type of brain scan would bring the “high cost” down, but it doesn’t provide an estimate of the current cost or any comparison to alternative methods of assessing reading ability or other features of dyslexia. We will give this story a satisfactory rating because it portrays this research as providing information for researchers seeking to understand dyslexia, rather than offering important direct benefits to individuals. However, most of the story is about what it is like to live with dyslexia. These anecdotes have little or nothing to do with the research. The list of celebrities who may have or had dyslexia also seems irrelevant and distracting. Then the story tosses in discussion of a study that looked at correlations between dyslexia and spatial skills; again, unrelated to the topic of the primary study reported here. The jumble of extraneous personal tales and other research muddles the point of the story. MRI brain scans are generally considered to present little physical risk, so the issue here is really the potential negative effects of the information the test produces. At least the story raises that issue by including comments from parents who worry that this sort of scanning could further stigmatize children who have trouble reading or writing. This story fails to point out that the “children” studied were not beginning readers, but teenagers who were already identified as having dyslexia and may have been involved in special reading programs for many years. It also fails to mention several of the caveats and limitations that the researchers noted in their journal article, including the possibility that misclassification of the participants based on their initial testing could affect the results. In other words, rather than actually improving during the study, it is possible some of the teens were actually better readers from the beginning, but just scored low on the baseline tests. Nevertheless, the story appropriately describes this study as helping researchers to understand the disease, rather than evaluating the clinical usefulness of brain scans. Also, one paragraph deep in the story highlights the preliminary nature of the research; specifically that the study included only 25 participants with dyslexia, “which is too small a sample size to prove anything.” It also notes that the study did not look at whether different varieties or reading instruction or other interventions might have had some effect and it includes a comment from an independent expert about the lack of data on instruction or other factors that could influence reading ability. The story would have been better if the alert to the preliminary nature of the study had been near the top, rather than buried near the end. The story refers to estimates that between 5 percent and 20 percent of the population has dyslexia. Unlike the Reuters story we also reviewed, this story provides a useful definition of dyslexia as “a condition that, broadly speaking, hinders a person’s ability to interpret language.”  The story does include independent experts. Although it does not discuss conflicts of interest, the authors of the main study declared no conflicts and reported that their study was supported by a number of grants from public agencies and foundations, though the baseline assessment of the participants was supported by a company that markets treatment interventions for people with dyslexia. One troubling point: the story describes one person who claims to have been helped by “training at a learning development center.” If this individual was associated with the company that helped sponsor this research, the story should have disclosed that connection. The study authors wrote that although standardized tests did not accurately predict changes in reading ability during the study period, “it is possible that there are behavioral measures not included here that may predict outcome.” Indeed, their journal article specifically referred to other research into clinical testing that did appear to predict how children with poor reading skills responded to teaching. The story fails to make clear that the study reported here did not attempt to make a comprehensive comparison of the predictive power of scans and other methods of assessing children with reading problems. The story notes that the type of scan used in this study is not widely available. The story implies that this study is the first to suggest young people with dyslexia use a certain area of the right hemisphere of their brains more than average readers. Actually, the study authors pointed out that their research provides some additional data to support the findings of many other studies of differences between the brains of people with dyslexia and those who read normally. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.

A: Dyslexia: Scanning the brain for clues
****
Q: Clark County Public Health officials said Wednesday that the child passed through the Portland International Airport and PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver Nov. 14 while contagious. The child also visited Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel in Portland from Nov. 16 to Nov. 17. The agency warned that people may have been exposed to the virus. Anyone exposed who is susceptible to the virus could start having symptoms between Nov. 18 and Dec. 9. Officials urge anyone who believes they have symptoms of measles to call their health care provider to make a plan that avoids exposing others. Clark County has had 72 confirmed measles cases this year. Measles is highly contagious. The U.S. has experienced a resurgence of the illness that’s fueled by outbreaks in unvaccinated communities.

A:
New measles case in child who visited Portland airport.
****