Insights

You learn a lot when you spend months reporting on a given issue or community, as our fellows can attest. Whether you’re embarking on a big new story or seeking to go deeper on a given issue, it pays to learn from those who’ve already put in the shoe leather and crunched the data. In these essays and columns, our community of journalists steps back from the notebooks and tape to reflect on key lessons, highlight urgent themes, and offer sage advice on the essential health stories of the day. 

Author(s)
By Ryan White

Former National Health Journalism Fellow Kate Long suggests it takes much more than a Facebook update and fleeting volley of Tweets to turn a reporting project into a catalyst for meaningful change.

Author(s)
By Ryan White

For the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2011 was the year of infant mortality. An enterprise reporting project of impressive dimensions, the paper drilled down by zip code looking for the cause of high infant deaths rates and how they could be stemmed.

Author(s)
By Katy Murphy

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.

Author(s)
By William Heisel

This Thursday, as part of the 2012 National Health Journalism Fellowship in Los Angeles, investigative reporter Duff Wilson will address the story that has everyone talking about food lobbying: How Washington went soft on childhood obesity. I asked him via email about how he did that story.

Author(s)
By Ryan White

If you could do one thing to ensure that you had a long, healthy life, what would you do? If you have less than a high school degree at 25, you can expect to live another 44 years, on average. Those with a graduate degree, however, can expect to live another 60 years, on average.

Author(s)
By Andrew Resignato

The Chinese call it the hundred day cough. In Spanish it is tosferina or “Bark of the Dog.” Pertussis, a.k.a. whooping cough, is a disease that many thought to be a thing of the past, but has been making a comeback for several decades now. In some cases, it has been deadly.