Angilee Shah

<p>Today's <em>Daily Briefing </em>is a bit behind schedule but is all about pushing health and health care forward.</p> <p><strong>Politics:</strong> Politico's Glenn Thrush has a <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45181.html">great lead here</a>: "A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in."</p>

<p>Today's <em>Daily Briefing</em> travels to Chinese mental institutions, California prisons, and all over the map with bogus trend stories.<br />

<p>When Linda Marsa received a copy of the December issue of <em>Discover</em> magazine in the mail, she was thrilled. Her story about climate change and its effect on long forgotten diseases in America made the cover. Never mind that she has been a journalist for 30 years, Marsa finds health journalism as riveting now as when she first began. And she is still learning ways to be a better freelancer.</p>

<p>Depending on whom you ask, AOL's Patch is either an innovative and well-intentioned new venture to infuse local news back into American communities, or it's "<a href="http://www.laweekly.com/2010-09-30/news/patch-the-walmart-of-news/">the Walmart of news</a>," a $50 million behemoth set on invading communities and running local sites from corporate headquarters. But they are hiring, and <a href="http://www.patch.com/jobs">hiring en masse</a>.

<p>Newsdesk and Spot.us are organizations intent on giving journalists financial support for in-depth reporting as mainstream media continues to shrink. They are seeking proposals for their "<a href="http://newsdesk.org/2010/10/the-los-angeles-toxic-tour-request-for-prop… Angeles Toxic Tour,</a>" stories that will be told in text and multimedia to highlight environmental concerns in this sprawling city.</p>

<p>Dr. Michael C. Lu's paradigm shift in medicine is called a "life course perspective": the idea that health is not isolated to stages of life, but that those stages are interconnected. It is the philosophical underpinning behind his devotion to prenatal care. Indeed, there are some surprising connections between mothers' lifestyles and nutrition during pregnancy and lifelong health effects on their children.</p>

<p>It's the kind of thing that makes traditionalists in journalism cringe, and convinces them that technology will ruin the integrity of news. SEO is the tech acronym for "search engine optimization," ways to design websites and content that will rank highly in search results. What many journalists might not realize is that the techniques of SEO are actually not that far off from the fundamentals of hard news.</p>

<p>Today’s <em>Daily Briefing</em> comes to you from the halls of the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships seminars. Join the conversation about new ideas in health journalism with the <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23chjf">hashtag #chjf on Twitter</a>&nbsp;as you get today’s e

<p>Carolyn Cannuscio comes from an avid newspaper-reading family. The health and science sections were always the table favorites. She recalls a conversation with her father where he imparted his wish that she do "something big" with her career. "Write a letter to Jane Brody about your work!" he sai

<p>This year's <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/fellowships/seminars/california-health… Health Journalism Fellows</a> are pursuing stories important to communities. They're investigating air quality, the on-the-ground effects of health care reform and children's health, and asking important questions about how neighborhoods can be healthier. Here's a quick rundown of some of their projects, with links to their own blog posts so you can learn more, comment and offer ideas.</p>