Reading some books is like feeling a cool breeze wash over you on a sun-dappled beach as waves gently lap nearby.
The whole effect is soothing, restorative, healing.
But then there are other books which grab you with an urgency the way your mother’s voice called you by your full name when you were in trouble.
I recently wrote about the new National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network launched by the Centers for Disease Control. A fascinating resource for reporters, but molasses-slow at its debut.
I'm happy to report that after playing with the network again, the online database has recovered from its torpor, which might be explained by an estimated 10,000 hits upon its launch.
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!
Eleven million Americans have eating disorders. Here are tips on covering this complex disease from a veteran journalist who faced the issue in her own family.
Gary Schwitzer is the professor that health reporters fear. With the creation of HealthNewsReview, he has brought back nightmares of having your work marked up in red and posted on a corkboard for everyone to see.
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.
According to a Pew Internet and American Life social networking survey, 35% of online adults had profiles on social networking sites in 2008, compared to 8% in 2005. Online social networking is still a "phenomenon of the young" for how ubiquitous Facebook and MySpace is among 18 to 24 year-olds, but 35% of adults overall have profiles on networking sites. African-American and Hispanic adults are more likely to have profiles than whites adults.
In covering the current swine flu outbreak, the ethnic media in the United States has been ahead of the curve on some stories the mainstream media is just picking up, such as a growing backlash against Mexicans.
