Fellows Sharon Salyer and Alejandro Dominguez's exhaustively-reported series on the mental health challenges facing Hispanics in the Pacific Northwest has won journalism prizes from the Association of Health Care Journalists, National Institute of Health Care Management, Mental Health America and the Society of Professional Journalists of the
The Washington Post's newsroom is in an uproar today after the political news website Politico.com broke a shocking story:
"For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and - at first - even the paper's own reporters and editors."
Within hours of the news breaking about Michael Jackson's death, attention started to turn toward one of the only eyewitnesses to the event: his personal physician.
A new Institute of Medicine report offers some excellent fodder for stories on "comparative effectiveness research," which examines whether and why some medical treatments are more effective than others.
You'll be hearing a lot about the comparative effectiveness buzzword as the national health reform debate unfolds, because it's seen as crucial in in lowering health costs. Why spend money on drug-eluting stents for heart disease, for example, if plain old stents might just keep people alive longer?
New York state has an interesting job that is foreign to most other states, the office of the Medicaid Inspector General. Lucky for health writers, the Inspector General there, James G. Sheehan, believes not only in rooting out people who are ripping off taxpayers, but in sharing his techniques and tactics with reporters.
Robin Lowe went to the Sano Medical Clinic in Costa Mesa one June with what appeared to be an obvious and urgent problem. She had felt a lump in her left breast.
At 29, she was young to develop breast cancer. Making matters worse, she was pregnant.
Dr. James Stirbl, the doctor who ran the clinic, examined Lowe but did not recommend she undergo a mammogram or a biopsy, according to the Medical Board of California.
A gravel pit near area homes has received a renewal of its permit although residents weren't given notice of the hearing.
A federal court of appeals recently upheld a lower court's 2006 decision that found the tobacco industry guilty of racketeering and fraud. The House of Representatives has already voted to give the F.D.A. powers to regulate tobacco products, and the Senate is considering a similar vote. It's time for universities such as the University of California to wake up and cut their research ties with Big Tobacco, which has long used university research results to defraud the public.
Don't you want to help this woman out?
Renata Celona lost both of her parents at a young age, victims of high blood pressure, the second leading preventable cause of death.
She checks her blood pressure at least once a day, avoids salt and tries to squeeze in trips to the gym between working two jobs and raising three kids on her own.
"I tell my kids that I am always going to be there for them," Celona, 47, says. "Even if I can't always pick them up from school, they know I will be tucking them into bed at night."
