The Center for Health Journalism invites journalists, policy thinkers and medical professionals to share their perspectives with our diverse and interdisciplinary community. Our member column captures a range of perspectives on health, health policy and health journalism. Interested in contributing? Reach out to editor@centerforhealthjournalism.org.
Original post on KQED's Bay Area Bites blog. Spinach, alfalfa sprouts, peanut butter, beef...almost weekly, FDA and USDA alerts fill my inbox with notices about food recalls due to Salmonella or E. Coli. How does our food supply get contaminated? And what safeguards exist to ensure that the foods we eat are produced in safe and sanitary conditions?
Trudy Lieberman is the president of The Association of Health Care Journalists board of directors, and she is the director of the health and medicine reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York. Ms. Lieberman is also a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, and a contributor to The Nation. Below is her blog post on how health care reporting is possible - and necessary!
We live in California. That means wildfire. But in some areas, particularly poor rural ones surrouned by federal forest land, the smoke could be slowly making residents sick.
This spring, the Redding Record Searchlight teamed with the Center for California Health Care Journalism to discover that last summer's wildfires made many poor, elderly residents seriously ill. Some continue to have chronic respiratory problems a year later.
A new study released in the Journal Pediatrics has confirmed what many of us in public health already knew: children whose parents refuse to have them vaccinated are more likely to get and spread pertussis. Some people are likely to say so what. Is pertussis really that common or serious? The answer to both those questions is yes.
Journalists are using geographic information software (GIS) to map data for stories and graphics about toxic health threats, prescription medicine abuse and EMS response times. Here are more ideas for using GIS in your health reporting.
