Mary Lee knows firsthand the fallout from living in an area without proper access to fresh, healthy food: She drives past three South Los Angeles grocery stores offering expired tortillas and wilted
"We're homogenizing the way the world goes mad," Ethan Watters, author of "Crazy Like Us," today told USC/California Endowment National Health Journalism Fellows gathered in Los Angeles this week.
Some interesting new data over at Medicare’s Hospital Compare database released Wed. is worth mining for enterprise stories about how people receive treatments for heart attacks and other medical conditions at hospitals in your community.
Pairing English-language and ethnic media to report stories can be rewarding and result in great journalism — but it poses its own challenges. Sharon Salyer and Alejandro Dominguez share what they learned from each other in reporting an award-winning series on Hispanic mental health.
Tom Linden seemed to be on a fast track to a successful career in journalism.
He was the editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper in Southern California. As a college student at Yale University, Linden got his reporter's legs at the Yale Daily News and covered the New Haven Black Panther trials for the Los Angeles Times. When he graduated in 1970, he won a fellowship and secured a book deal to write about army deserters in exile who were protesting or escaping the Vietnam War.
In a little more than two weeks, we will launch our 2010 National Health Journalism Fellowships. Of course, we hope and expect that the talented journalists who participate will produce great stories. But we will know this program has succeeded if it prompts participants to challenge conventional notions of what constitutes a health story. Seminar speakers will touch upon topics as varied as international trade and gang violence. But running through the Fellowships' weeklong extended conversation is a common theme: the links between Place and Health.
As Americans struggle with the aftermath of the health care reform bill, and try to determine exactly what it means for themselves and their families, the homeless population is often ignored. Most assume that homeless Americans get free medical care, but that is not necessarily the case. Even those who do have government-sponsored health care are forced to make difficult choices when health must compete with food, shelter, and transportation. This ongoing series of stories will detail the plight of the 'sick and homeless' in Riverside, California.
Last week, my oldest daughter graduated from high school and began her journey as a young adult. As a proud parent and the commencement speaker, I shared some life lessons with the class of 2010. Here is some of what I said:
Mr. Ronnie Quinn is about my age but twice my size and looks like Michael Oher, the professional football player from the movie "The Blind Side."
Despite high fever and his blood teeming with bacteria, he was sitting up in his hospital bed with the sheets pulled up to his thighs. Looking me in the eye, he greeted me with a smile.
When radio reporter Devin Browne began her foray to the edges of journalism, media commentators seized on her project quickly. Her multimedia journal uses prose, images and audio clips to tell a story about how she and a photographer moved into the cramped apartment of an immigrant family in MacArthur Park to learn Spanish. The Entryway, so called for the small space Browne rented, was quickly and harshly criticized for exoticizing Los Angeles' large Latino population.
At a conference like today's "Improving Health Literacy in Los Angeles," which focused on the sensitive issue of improving health literacy in some of Los Angeles' underserved communities, racial stereotypes should be a far-away concern.
But when the time came for tables of conference attendees to report back to the whole after doing a group interactive activity, it became clear that even the most well-meaning and forward-thinking health professionals have far to go.
