Insights

<p>Robert Niles at the <em>Online Journalism Review </em>wrote a blog post on Nov. 12 listing his top five picks for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/robert/201011/1908/">beats at a local website or newspaper</a>. He lists food, education, labor, business and faith. The omission of a health beat rankled some of Niles' readers and raised some important questions about local health reporting. <strong>Where should health as a specialized beat fall on the local news totem pole? Can health be covered well by food and business beats?

<p>Pop quiz: Which scenario will cause a doctor to lose her license in Tennessee?</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">A. You go into business with a convicted murderer, who also happens to be your husband, and you get caught selling drugs illegally, resulting in a felony conviction.</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">B. You fall behind on your professional license fees.</p> <p>If you answered “B” you are right.</p>

The connection between Native Americans, Ben Franklin and big pharma, BPA and Agent Orange, and "value for money" in health care

<p>Studies show that many people faced with home loss and housing uncertainty <a href="http://www.docgurley.com/2010/11/23/will-losing-your-home-kill-you/">can take a tremendous hit to their health</a>. If you're going through difficult times, and worried you too may lose your home, what can you do to try to buffer or reclaim your health?</p> <p>Here are some tips for ways to counteract some of the toll that constant stress (and the insomnia, distraction and desperation that go with it) can take on your health:</p>

This is one in a series of articles examining the relationship between housing loss and death in San Francisco. Check out the previous articles in the series, Looking for death, and Gunpowder on the streets....

<p><img src="http://cu.convio.net/images/content/pagebuilder/13706.jpg&quot; style="float: left; margin-left: 15px; margin-right: 15px;" />Here are five more great ideas I picked up at the Consumers Union Safe Patient Summit last week in Austin. The first five were <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/

<p>Dear ReportingonHealth community and readers,</p><p>This evening we conducted a site upgrade so that we can create new features with added security. The site looks the same, but has many improvements on from a usability standpoint. If you are a member, you'll notice changes in the blog and story entry templates. We have some known bugs to correct, but if you have any questions or see any problems on the site please don't hesitate to send me an email. You can reach me at healthj [at] usc [dot] edu.</p><p>Thank you!</p><p>Angilee Shah</p><p>Community Manager, Center for Health Journalism Digital</p>

Fitness journalism could use a little transformation. Rather than "selling miracle cures" -- huge lifestyle changes daunting to most people, and extremely rare cases of success that few will achieve -- how about focusing on the small changes we can manage collectively, and telling stories about the champions of those changes?

<p>In tandem, both ambulance, and fire truck, red lights strobed across the narrow cave-like doorway to the Tom Waddell clinic. The images flashed in the dark, like red-tinted, stop-motion animation. Inside the narrow space the six of us from needle exchange creaked zombie-like to our feet from wher