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 Angilee Shah

<p>At ReportingonHealth, we aim to provide useful resources to members from a variety of sources. In that spirit, here are three fellowship opportunities that might interest you. Attend a conference, or become a fellow-in-residence at a university. Either way, if you are interested in these programs, apply soon.</p>

Author(s)
By William Scanlon

<p>About halfway through my October trip to Grand Junction, Colorado to see if the community's unusual health-care model could or should be replicated, I got so enthused about the possibilities that I had to keep close tabs on my objectivity.</p><p>I settled for a package that presents the Grand Junction model as an intriguing possibility, while including skeptics and naysayers.</p>

Author(s)
By William Scanlon

<p>As Congress slugs it out over health-care reform this week, hopeful eyes are on Grand Junction, CO., where low-cost, high-quality near-universal health care is the norm.</p> <p>You can find my new five-part series on Grand Junction’s health care system <a href="http://www.kbdi.org/news/">here</a&gt;. &nbsp;</p> <p>The doctors in Grand Junction, a western Colorado city of 53,000, say their system can become a national model, and there are doctors in dozens of communities ready to replicate the system that uses a non-profit insurance provider but allows doctors to work for profit.</p>

Author(s)
By R. Jan Gurley

<p>Even the predawn day began a little differently. The shrill distant stadium cheers of hundreds of Haitian roosters sounded oddly synchronized, as though perhaps they were doing the wave. There were more dogs keeping the beat with incessant, rhythmic barking.<br />

Author(s)
By William Heisel

<p>It was bad enough for Dr. Conrad Murray to be giving Michael Jackson propofol when <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/michael-jackson%E2%80%99s-doctor%E2%80%99s-mistakes-part-2-lack-training-gives-prosecutors-ammo-criminal-case">he had no training</a> administering anesthetics. His second mistake was using a dangerous drug in an improper setting: a bedroom.</p> <p>Here was Murray’s surgical suite, according to <a href="http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0208101jackson3.html">t… Los Angeles County Coroner’s report</a>:</p>

Author(s)
By Barbara Feder Ostrov

<p>We’re Number 6! Hurray!</p> <p>There has been quite a flurry of quick-hit news stories about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s <a href="http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/">health rankings of the nation’s counties</a>. Apparently, at one point on the day they were released, “county health rankings” was the top search term in Google News.</p> <p>Too bad a number of these stories were boosterish (or defensive) pieces, devoid of context, about where individual counties ranked in comparison to the one next door.</p>