Center for Health Journalism 2019 California Fellowship Projects
Silicon Valley is one of the wealthiest regions in the United States. Yet a cluster of communities -- Belle Haven, East Menlo Park and East Palo Alto -- have some of the highest poverty levels in California, with the kinds of health problems and education challenges that go with them. In "Uneven Ground," a three-part series for the Menlo Almanac and its sister publication, Palo Alto Online, Kate Bradshaw looked into the historical roots of these disparities, and their contemporary effects on health. In Part 1, Kate reviewed the history of the communities, which were for decades the only areas in which people of color could buy homes because of redlining practices by real estate agents and mortgage lenders that kept them from buying homes in neighboring Palo Alto and Menlo Park. Because of lax zoning, several heavy industries settled in the communities, contributing to air that is more polluted than in neighboring cities. In Part 2, she documented the barriers to eating healthy food for the communities' residents and the resulting health problems. In Part 3, she looked into how commuters cutting through these communities to reach their jobs add to an already bad air pollution problem. A community organization, "Menlo Together," held an event two months after her project ran to discuss some of the issues she raisesd in her reporting. "My stories were shared in an East Palo Alto neighbors Facebook group and started a conversation about what it's like to be part of a community that people of color were forced to live in, where now people are being priced out," Kate told us. Menlo Park Councilwoman Cecilia Taylor, who represents Belle Haven, one of the underresourced communities Kate reported on, tweeted "Thank you @bradshk14 for your leadership in journalism. #HistoryWillBeTold," and linked to her stories. "For years, her mother, Pam Jones, a citizen watchdog, has been telling the city that redlining and blockbusting happened. I think people believed her, but my story helped people understand how severe the racism and segregation in the community was in decades past, and how those impacts are still borne by these communities in the disparities of environmental health they experience today," Kate told us. Kate received a community engagement grant and six months of mentoring from the Center for Health Journalism. She used the grant to pay stipends to three bilingual Sequoia High School students to help her conduct more than 100 bilingual interviews. Her project also included photos taken by middle school students who live in East Palo Alto and participate in Girls to Women, a youth empowerment organization. As part of her engagement work, she partnered with Cafe Zoe, a local cafe, to show the photographs taken for the project by the middle school students, as well as a reception and community conversation to honor the youths' work. "This Fellowship helped me see that health is about so much more than hospital budgets and some of the more wonky areas that can feel inaccessible on a very full daily news work grind," Kate told us. The California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA) recognized Kate's project with a second place award for public service reporting.
In "Costs of Living,"a multimedia series for the Napa Register published in English and Spanish, Courtney Teague explored the impact of the shortage of affordable housing on the mental and physical health on the service workers who make the Napa Valley one of the nation's leading tourist destinations. Her first story described the depth of the problem, with families doubling and tripling up in small units and nearly 40 percent of renters spending at least a third of their incomes on rent. Stress about being able to pay rent or a mortgage can turn into hopelessness, which can spiral into depression, experts told her, causing a chemical change in the body that can worsen chronic conditions. In her second piece, she looked at how the area's high cost of living affects businesses and makes them less able to provide employees with health insurance. In her third piece, she explored barriers to health care for the farmworkers who power the region's wine industry. Courtney received a special $2,000 community engagement grant and six months of mentoring by the Center's engagement editor. Her engagement effort prompted nearly 200 people to share their housing stories. The Register also hosted a series of community dinners at which residents discussed how their housing struggles affect their health. And on October 10, it hosted a town hall and panel discussion on housing, featuring speakers from the public and nonprofit sectors.
For her Fellowship project, Nuala Sawyer, news editor of SF Weekly, explored a variety of health issues affecting San Francisco's large homeless population. In her first story, she reported on the city's failure to comply with a mandate to reunite homeless people with belongings confiscated during regular "sweeps," which has led to some health problems in people who lose their medications, wheelchairs or medical records. In her second story, she examined the health effects of the sweeps in more detail, including the loss of vials of Narcan, which can reverse an overdose, as well as prescriptions that mitigate withdrawal symptoms. Her final story reported on the city's success in treating homeless people with hepatitis C because of the availability of new drugs, Medi-Cal’s subsequent adoption of them and a mobile van that offers free testing for hepatitis C, which many afflicted people don't know they have.
Susie Steimle, an investigative reporter for the CBS station in San Francisco, produced a two-part series about deaths at Calfornia's loosely regulated drug and alcohol rehab centers. In her first piece, she reported that 190 people had died at rehab facilities in California since 2010, and focused on the death of Teddy Russell, 19, at the Mountain Vista Farm, a state-licensed residential detox facility, seven hours after being admitted in the summer of 2018. There was no medical staff on the premises, and no one checked on him every 30 minutes, as required by state regulations for patients in their first three days at a treatment facility. Susie also mapped the locations of all deaths in rehab in California since 2010 and included details about whether the facilities had been fined or lost their licenses. Often they had not. In her second piece, Susie reported on five proposals pending in Sacramento to tighten the restrictions governing the facilities.
Jessica Cejnar, a reporter for the Wild Rivers Outpost, spent much of 2019 reporting on food insecurity in California's northernmost county, Del Norte. In her first story in late July, she profiled a summer feeding program for school children that makes sure that they don't go hungry when school is out. In August, she reported on the Yurok Tribe’s acquisition of 50,000 acres of ancestral territory, about a third of which will be restored as a forest ecosystem that can become a sanctuary for salmon and other wildlife, including the endangered coho salmon, a staple of the Yurok diet. A recipient of one of the Center's community engagement grants, Jessica published a questionnaire in the Wild Rivers Outpost seeking residents' stories about where they get their food and whether what they get is adequate. She also moderated a Facebook group where residents of Del Norte County could share information about food. With assistance from Danielle Fox, the Center's engagement editor, Jessica held a panel discussion on food access and food sovereignty in Klamath on October 17. After learning about the widespread food insecurity in Del Norte County through Jessica's reporting, the Food For People’s Mobile Produce Pantry began making monthly visits to the county for the first time to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables and milk to low-income residents.
Monica Vaughan of the San Luis Obispo Tribune spent much of 2019 investigating the impact of poor air quality caused by off-road vehicles at Oceano Dunes State Park on nearby residents' health. A recipient of a community engagement grant, she sought input from residents from the start of her reporting by publishing an article in June announcing her investigation. In an explainer about the project, Dust from the dunes: Our investigation of air quality and health on the Nipomo Mesa, she provided an overview of the problem: high levels of particulate matters blowing downwind from the dunes, with the highest levels coming from areas that are regularly disturbed by off-road vehicles. In September, with assistance from Danielle Fox, the Center's engagement editor, Monica and her colleagues held a forum to preview the findings from her reporting and the health risks of breathing air with particulate matter, such as the dust generated by off-road vehicles in the dunes, and to provide tips about how residents can receive air quality alerts so they know when the air is unhealthy to breathe and what they can do to protect their families. A subsequent article, Do you live on the Nipomo Mesa? Here’s how to protect yourself when air quality is poor, reported key takeaways from the event. All of her stories can be accessed here.
April Ehrlich, a reporter for Jefferson Public Radio, which covers southern Oregon and northern California, produced "Oppressed by Wildfire," a four-part radio and Web series on the long-term effects of California's increasingly severe fire season, which in 2018 killed 97 civilians and six firefighters and destroyed almost 23,000 buildings, most of them homes. In her first piece, she reported that residents who don't speak English are at heightened risk because emergency alerts and evacuation orders are almost always broadcast only in English. In addition, the Trump Administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric and public charge policy have led many to forgo disaster assistance for fear of jeopardizing their paths to citizenship. In her second piece, she explored the difficulties that the elderly and persons with disabilities face in evacuating fire zones. Her third piece reported that homeless people are ineligible for disaster assistance following a fire. And her fourth piece reported on research that found that Native American, Latino and African American people are disproportionately affected by wildfires. April told us that the Fellowship inspired her "to seek more health-related stories in rural Northern California, particularly with regards to social implications of health. The speakers really opened my eyes to issues I was not aware of before." In her "Lessons from the Field" essay, she wrote about the challenges of building trust with people who had been traumatized by the loss of their homes and might be worried about being deported. "Here I was, a stranger dropping into people’s lives, asking that they tell me their deeply personal stories from a traumatic event," she wrote. "How would they know that I won’t exploit their sorrow for web clicks? And if they’ve immigrated from another country, how would they know that my reporting wouldn’t expose and endanger them?"
Laura Wenus, a reporter and producer for KALW public radio in San Franciso, produced a three-part series on the reasons why nursing home capacity is diminishing in California. In her first story, she reported o the main reason--the state's high real estate costs. In some areas of the state, particularly the Bay Area, vacancies are so low that families must place a loved one in a home hours away, making visits difficult. In her second story, she described the economic incentives for nursing homes to favor short-stay patients -- those coming directly from a three-day hospital stay, which means most are fully covered by Medicare for up to 20 days and partially covered for up to 80 more days, if the patient meets certain conditions -- compared with long-stay low-income patients, most of whom are covered by Medi-Cal, which pays the homes much less than Medicare. In her third story, she described one former patient's dissatisfaction with the care she received at a nursing home and the recourse available to nursing home patients with complaints.
Los Angeles County's beach communities have large populations of people who are unhoused, and Gary Walker, a reporter for the Argonaut News, set out to find out what their health problems were. In a four-part series, he explored some of the health and social problems that lead to homelessness and sometimes death -- mental illness, drug and alcohol dependency -- and a street medical team's efforts to treat them. Many homeless people worry that the Trump Administration's threats to health care coverage through Medicaid could undermine their health. He also reported that women are the fastest growing demographic among the homeless population, and a major reason is domestic violence.
Julia Baum looked into how tightened qualifications for the food stamp program, SNAP, were affecting people in San Jose. In her first story for San Jose Inside and Metro Silicon Valley, she looked into why so few college students in California apply for SNAP benefits, despite estimates of widespread food insecurity, and how those who do receive SNAP would be affected by proposed eligibility requirements. In her second story, also for San Jose Inside and Metro Silicon Valley, she reported that one in four Santa Clara County low-income residents would likely lose their monthly government food assistance benefits because of a new federal rule to alter work requirements for food stamp recipients. Her third story, for San Jose Spotlight, reported on the important role that food banks play in satisfying the food needs of low-income college students.
David Mendez is a reporter for Easy Reader News, which covers the beach communities near Los Angeles, one of a select group of communities around the United States that has been designated a "Blue Zone Project" community because they have adopted public polices aimed at giving their residents a boost in longevity. Dave took a look at what that meant for the mostly affluent communities he covers, as well as for Salinas, California, and Klamath Falls, Oregon, two other designated West Coast "Blue Zones" with more entrenched social and health problems. For his long-form Fellowship project story, he compared the experiences of the California beach communities with Salinas and Klamath Falls and found that the Southern California lifestyle gave the beach communities' residents a decided advantage over the communities to the north.
Debra Varnado produced a three-part series on the disproportionate impact of domestic violence on African Americans for The Los Angeles Wave. In her first story, she reported that Los Angeles Police Department is falling short of its target goals for cricic intervention because of local precincts's failure to implement the new protocols. Her second story discussed the multiple factors that play roles in inciting domestic violence, including low wages and economic hardship, emotional responses to discrimination, homelessness and food insecurity. Her third story examined promising solutions and why so many lack adequate resources.
Alyssa Perry, a reporter for Southern California Public Radio, was surprised to learn from a parent that her child was not allowed to drink water at the city-run after-school program she attended. The reason: counselors were concerned that the water was tainted. Instead, they served the children Kool-Aid, which has a high sugar content. Alyssa thought there must be regulations requiring that water be served, along with healthy snacks. She found out that there are, but that the recreation department wasn't following them. Instead, it fed the kids Cheetos, Oreos, Capri Sun drinks, cupcakes, candy, potato chips and cookies. An analysis of a year of food and beverage purchases at five centers found that overall, fresh fruits and vegetables accounted for just 5% of the centers' combined food budgets. Alyssa got results from her reporting even before she aired her story on KPCC and published it in LAist. In response to Alyssa's questions, Vicki Israel, assistant general manager of the Department of Recreation and Parks and co-author of the department's 15-year-old child nutrition policy, reminded rec center program managers to follow the regulations.
While covering the police beat, Almendra Carpizo, a reporter for the Stockton Record, noticed that the police and county sheriff's deputies spent much of their time responding to calls about domestic violence. For her Fellowship project, she took a deeper look and reported that police and deputies responded to almost 16,000 calls in 40 months, or 400 times a month. In an accompanying sidebar, she reported that seven county women had died as a result of domestic violence in the previous two years, all leaving children behind. In her second story, she reported on how witnessing domestic violence can traumatize children and make it more likely that they will become abusers as adults.
Monica Lopez, a reporter and producer for Making Contact, an internationally syndicated radio show. produced a 30-minute radio documentary on the difficulty that victims of domestic violence having get guns out of the hands of their abusers. Several types of restraining orders can be obtained to prohibit a person from owning or possessing firearms. But to get many of them, a petitioner has to wait for a crime to be committed. A new type of order, called a Gun Violence Restraining Order, is designed to keep shootings from happening in the first place. The law went into effect in California on January 1, 2016, but isn't being used as frequently as some lawmakers had hoped, Monica reported.
In "The Cost of Silky Soft," an episode of KRCW's "Bodies" podcast, Allison Behringer explored the complicated relationship between African American women and products designed to minimize or mask body odors. She focused specifically on Johnson & Johnson's baby powder, which she found was marketed to black women as a way of staying clean. The podcast also examines the conflicting evidence over whether use of talc baby powder, which can inadvertently be contaminate with asbestos, might be linked to ovarian cancer.