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. 

Fraud Fishing, Part 1: Why that corner health clinic might be flush with ill-gotten gains

By William Heisel

<p>In Santa Ana, Calif., I used to live near a health clinic that ostensibly catered to Spanish-speaking mothers, a noble calling in big city with a large, underserved immigrant population.</p> <p>Years before, in reporting a story, I had found that the obstetrician who ran the clinic had among the highest delivery rates in the county. "According to a database of county birth certificate information, he was delivering, on average, more than three babies a day, every day of the year.</p>

Covering Urban Violence as a Public Health Problem: Context and History

By Barbara Feder Ostrov

<p>Emergency room doctor <a href="http://www.nonviolenceandsocialjustice.org/About-Us/Team-Bios/36/#corbi… Corbin</a> was tired of stitching up the same gang members over and over, only to send them back out to Philadelphia’s most violent streets. So he did something novel: he started talking to them. He challenged his own assumptions. And he helped to start <a href="http://www.nonviolenceandsocialjustice.org/Healing-Hurt-People/29/">Hea… Hurt People</a>, a program that links young people treated in the ER for intentional injuries to social workers and mental health professionals.

Anthrax, Drumming Circles and Nonprofit Profits: The ReportingonHealth Daily Briefing

By Barbara Feder Ostrov

<p>Here’s what we’re reading (and listening to) today:</p> <p><strong>Rural Health:</strong> KQED’s Health Dialogues program focuses on <a href="http://www.californiareport.org/archive/R201007222000">rural health issues</a> including long distances to health care, lack of specialists and poverty.</p> <p><strong>Anthrax:</strong> Who knew you could contract anthrax by <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5928a3.htm?s_cid=mm5928a3_e"… on an animal-skin skin drum</a>? Some folks at a New Hampshire drumming circle found out the hard way.</p>

Why I left ScienceBlogs

By Maryn McKenna

<p>Let me tell you a little story about my first husband.</p><p>We met when I was in graduate school. He was a foreign journalist working in America and I interned where he worked. I left town, finished my degree, moved back. We reconnected, got married, and were considered enough of a catch -- two sharp young thrusters, an investigative reporter and an editor -- to be head-hunted by a large paper in the Midwest.</p>

Doctors Behaving Badly: Indiana drug mill kept patients happy and hooked

By William Heisel

<p>Wikipedia has no entry for the term “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&amp;redirs=0… mill</a>.”</p> <p>Antidote offers the following: <em>A physician’s office where people suffering from injuries or chronic diseases are given high doses of addictive drugs to keep them returning for more and where people already addicted to painkillers can obtain drugs with no questions asked. </em></p> <p>Exhibit A is the Bloomington, Indiana office of Dr. Larry Dean Ratts.</p>

Recap: A week of challenging health news narratives

By Angilee Shah

<p>Last week, the USC/California Endowment National Health Journalism Fellows were knee-deep in seminars and conversations about international trade, urban violence and community campaigns. As it turns out, these are all <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/blogs/reinventing-health-beat-local-im… for a health beat</a>. The National Health Journalism Fellows and Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism grant recipients convened in Los Angeles to expand their reporting horizons.