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Michelle Levander

Michelle Levander

Editor and Founding Director

My life has been enriched by work as a reporter, editor and, currently, as a journalism educator, news leader and founder of the USC Center for Health Journalism.

In 2004, I launched the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. Before that I worked in daily journalism in California at the San Jose Mercury News and in Asia for the Asian Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine Asia. I also spent a year in Mexico, studying and later writing about immigrants and the tug North as an Inter American Press Association Fellow at El Colegio de México and El Colegio de Michoacán and in villages in the region. I'm a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and UC Berkeley.

To learn more about some of the initiatives I've launched and now manage at the Center, click here to learn about our Fellowships and Impact Funds, here to learn about our reporting collaboratives and here to see the journalism that results. I also co-founded Boyle Heights Beat, a bilingual youth media community news project, and served as its hands-on co-editor and publisher for a decade, along with Pedro Rojas, then executive editor of La Opinión

I welcome your feedback and ideas on the work we do. Please contact me at editor@centerforhealthjournalism.org.

Articles

Our Reporting on Health Collaborative found that valley fever causes more deaths than Hantavirus, hepatitis A, whooping cough and salmonella poisoning combined, yet all of these conditions are more widely known.

<p>We figure that Reporting on Health can stay innovative and relevant to you by constantly adapting to your ideas and the enormous changes reshaping the media and health landscape around us. Please answer our survey to help with our next steps.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Reporters have an unprecedented opportunity this year to chronicle a historic battle in the unfolding story of federal health reform. Yet getting the story right will depend on mastering the details.</p>

<p>Agile project management is built around flexibility, quick decision-making and an ability to make course corrections when confronted with new ideas and new information. Agile reporting approaches news gathering as a two-way conversation with the audience.</p>

<p>Check out our upcoming webinars on how to build your own "health reporting survival kit" and embedding multimedia content on your blog or website!</p>