Insights

<p>Interested in mashing up health data to report on your community? A new federal <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/open/datasets/communityhealthdata.html">community health data initiative</a> launched today may help.</p> <p>Here’s more from the U.S. Health and Human Services Agency:</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The Community Health Data Initiative is a major new public-private effort that aims to help Americans understand health and health care performance in their communities – and to help spark and facilitate action to improve performance…</em></p>

<p>Kevin Jermaine Edmonds, a young ob/gyn with a brand new practice, presumably would have better luck than most trying to impress a woman he has met at a bar.</p><p>But why bother leaving the office at all when your calendar is full of women undressing and telling you the most intimate details of their lives?</p><p>Doctor-patient relationships are barred by state law and by long established medical ethics. In part, these relationships are discouraged because they can cloud a physician’s judgment and potentially lead to patient harm.</p>

<p>Whether you’re facing hourly, daily or monthly deadlines, it’s nice to get some inspiration from some excellent health journalists and the people who edit them.</p> <p>For that inspiration, I turned off my laptop and opened an actual book: <a href="http://www.cqpress.com/product/NYT-Health.html">The New York Times Reader: Health and Medicine</a> (CQ Press, 2010). This recently-published paperback, an annotated anthology of work by the New York Times’ health and medical writers, is aimed at journalism students, but professionals at all levels can learn from it too.</p>

<p>Have you ever gone in for an oil change and left with the suspicion that the mechanics didn’t do anything beyond opening your hood?</p> <p>Anemona Hartocollis at <em>The New York Times</em> has exposed this same type of behavior in a much more critical venue: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/nyregion/26hospital.html">a local hospital</a>. She <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/nyregion/26hospital.html">wrote</a>:<…;

<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>A new CDC report offers state-by-state stats on hospital infections – but you have to read between the lines for the real story. &nbsp;</strong></p>

<p>Decades of anti-smoking public health campaigns have turned into background noise. We all know smoking is bad for us, but yet we allow ourselves to get caught up in the sexiness of it when a show like Mad Men comes along. Even our president has admitted to a regular habit.</p>

<p>When radio reporter <a href="../../../../../../../../users/devinelizabeth">Devin Browne</a> began her foray to the edges of journalism, media commentators seized on her project quickly. Her multimedia journal uses prose, images and audio clips to tell a story about how she and a photographer moved into the cramped apartment of an immigrant family in MacArthur Park to learn Spanish. <a href="http://the-entryway.com/">The Entryway</a>, so called for the small space Browne rented, was quickly and harshly criticized for exoticizing Los Angeles' large Latino population.

Lots of coverage today on a new study linking frequent indoor tanning with a higher risk of getting melanoma, one of the more deadly types of skin cancer. But why aren't more reporters also writing about the absolute risks?

<p>What does it take for your record to be blemished if you’re a doctor in Florida?</p> <p>Would attempting to have sex with a child leave a dent?</p> <p>Apparently not.</p> <p>As <a href="http://muckrack.com/SShealthwriter">Bob LaMendola</a> at the Florida <em>Sun Sentinel</em> <a href="http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-05-15/business/fl-florida-doctor-…;, Dr. Stuart F. Tillman, a Tallahassee anesthesiologist, was busted in July 2009 and charged with soliciting sex online from a 14-year-old girl.</p>

<p>At a conference like today's "Improving Health Literacy in Los Angeles," which focused on the sensitive issue of improving health literacy in some of Los Angeles' underserved communities, racial stereotypes should be a far-away concern.</p><p>But when the time came for tables of conference attendees to report back to the whole after doing a group interactive activity, it became clear that even the most well-meaning and forward-thinking health professionals have far to go.</p>