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. 

Kwashiorkor in Surf City: 5 Tips from California Watch's Medicare billing investigation

By William Heisel

<p>Picture a honey sunrise glistening across the Pacific. A wave rises up, lifting a golden surfer, hair flapping in the wind like a flag as he negotiates a perfect turn and glides toward the beach. He steps onto the sand and his smile falls. Among the women in bikinis and men playing volleyball is a horrible scene of human suffering: a throng of senior citizens in wheel chairs, their bellies distended from malnutrition, flies landing on their eyelids, which are too sapped of any strength even to blink them away.</p>

Youth Journalism Resources

By Marona Graham-Bailey

<p>Young people represent the next generation of our reporters. Not only will early training produce a crop of talented journalists, it gives youth a platform to voice how issues directly affect them — all while gaining insight into the topics they research and report. Youth media may appear in the form of school publications, classroom-produced projects, partnerships between youth and media organizations or independent, citywide media outlets. Here are some examples of youth-produced media and teacher resources to get you started:</p>

Medical Bankruptcies in Massachussetts: After Reform, No Decline

By Barbara Feder Ostrov

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Answers and more in our Daily Briefing.</p>

African American student in classroom

You Win Some: Teaching Health Journalism to Kids

By Marona Graham-Bailey

<p>There are plenty of places to stumble in teaching kids how to do health journalism. Here are Marona Graham Bailey's do's and don'ts after her first summer teaching middle school students.</p>

After sanctions, negligent abortion doc transforms into weight-loss pill peddler

By William Heisel

<p>Fined by the Nevada medical board and <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/patients-nevada-prepare-be-patient-when-researching-your-doctor">ordered to stop performing abortions</a>, Dr. Algis Martell had a decision to make.</p> <p>As so many doctors do when they make a mess of their primary specialty, Martell decided to get a makeover.</p>