Asthma is the most common cause of hospital stays for children. It can strike anyone, but has a disproportionate impact on low-income and African-American children. Katy Murphy, a 2012 National Health Journalism Fellow, shares lessons learned from her Fellowship project for the Oakland Tribune
I’m an education writer. My job at the Oakland Tribune is, mostly, to report on the local public school systems and the people in them. But the context in which children live -- and in the case of this project, breathe -- often comes into my reporting, too. It has to. Asthma is one of those realities.
Tragically, the murder of a 17-year-old student became a reason to run a fellowship project on inner-city teens and stress. But I wish this time hook had never happened.
Ditiyan Franklin was a B student with college aspirations and a big, dimpled smile. Just last week he went to his senior prom, dressed in an impeccable white suit -- a memory stored in a key chain photo his father now carries in his pocket. Had he lived another month, Franklin would have experienced another rite of passage: high school graduation. But on Wednesday, gunfire cut his future short.
Veteran food policy journalist Christopher Cook offers context on "food deserts" and how to identify and report on them in your community.
The Internet and social media have a way of upending professional conventions and giving rise to new models. As traditional boundaries blur, some unique collaborations have emerged between cutting-edge journalists and public health practitioners. I’ve been fascinating by some of these projects, which have yielded new insights, ground-breaking stories and new ways of connecting with the public.
Cross posted, with permission, from Mary Lou Fulton's blog The Media Optimist:
On Sunday, a four-part series a year in the making runs in the Bay Area News Group. As the science reporter for the chain, I teamed with health reporter Sandy Kleffman to report and write this series.
Jack Cheevers is the communications director for Region 9 of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for administering Medicare, Medicaid, State Children's Health Insurance (SCHIP), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA), and several other health-related programs. Cheevers oversees communications in Region 9, which covers California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific Trust territories.
