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

No self-respecting journalist wants to swallow wholesale the exaggerated or downright false claims some nonprofits occasionally make in justifying their raison d'être. And in today’s newsrooms, most reporters don’t have the time to fully evaluate such claims.

Author(s)
By Ryan White

These are nerve-wracking times for directors of California’s public hospitals and clinics. With the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid set to go into effect in early 2014, safety-net facilities could potentially find themselves losing a considerable share of their patients and revenue.

Author(s)
By Belle Taylor-McGhee

When I first began researching the issue of black maternal mortality, I was shocked to learn the high death rates among Black women dying from pregnancy-related complications across the U.S. In California, Black women are dying at four times the rate of White women from pregnancy-related causes.

Author(s)
By Ryan White

A California law allows courts to order assisted outpatient treatment for people with a history of serious mental illness and violence. This raises a dilemma: Should society be able to force mentally ill individuals to get treatment, or does that amount to a infringement on their civil liberties?

Author(s)
By Ryan White

The complexities of health reform are enough to make anybody’s head seize up, let alone the diligent health reporter who is expected to serve as guide to all the policy changes.

Author(s)
By Ryan White

Inefficiencies, profiteering, and disregard for evidence-based medicine plague our health care system, Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society told the 2013 California Health Journalism Fellows. The coming "tsunami of chronic disease" stands to intensify the situation.

Author(s)
By Catherine Stifter

Why is the high school dropout rate in the San Joaquin Valley among the highest in the California? CapRadio will produce a documentary that tells stories of youth and adults touched by the dropout crisis with accuracy, depth, nuance and respect.