Insights

<p>Urban planning, land use and redevelopment traditionally haven’t been hot topics on the health beat. <a href="http://www.phlpnet.org/php/staff/ogilvie-phd">Robert Ogilvie</a> thinks they should be.</p>

<p>If communities build access to healthy foods, will residents come? The evidence is mixed.</p>

<p>You can lead the people to fresh produce and other healthy food, but you can’t make them eat it: perspectives from a diabetes specialist and a journalist.</p>

<p>Angela Glover Blackwell of PolicyLink shares ideas and reporting tips for covering the links between your health and where you live.</p>

<p>Dr. David Kessler highlights how the trifecta of sugar, fat and salt stimulates our brains, making us want more and more instead of feeling satiated. Even when we know certain foods are bad for us, we can't stop overeating. What is a journalist's role in how Americans relate to their food?</p>

<p>What you can learn from a great investigative series on the lack of parks in one Southern California region and what that means for residents' health and well-being.</p>

<p>A vaccine success story, making money of Medicare patients, cholera on the rise in Haiti and more from our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>In late 2009, I read an article in O magazine about a Binghamton, New York, community that’s gone without a neighborhood supermarket for more than 15 years. That sparked my interest in communities, fresh food and what happens to people’s health when they eat what is merely convenient and/or affordable.</p>

<p>The health coverage law Massachusetts passed in 2006 became a model for the national Affordable Care Act. But there is widespread recognition that attempts to expand coverage will fail unless the US figures out how to reduce rising health care costs. My project focuses on efforts to lower health care spending in Massachusetts, efforts that are putting the state, once again, in the national spotlight.</p>

<p>As a National Health Journalism fellow, I will be examining the obstacles to healthy eating for low-income black families in Boston. Specifically, I will focus on the obstacles of food pricing, food access, and the “business of unhealthiness,” the web of market incentives that drive individuals towards unhealthy food choices. In addition, I will also examine the creative solutions local activists devise to overcome these barriers to a nutritious diet.</p>