Field Notes
Learn more from award-winning journalists and health experts here. Topics in Health essays offer overviews of key issues, while Craft essays present “how-to” tips from the Center for Health Journalism Digital.
Topics in Health
Finding people to actually talk about their experiences is tough. For many people, eviction is...
Health experts point to the crippling influence of institutionalized racism as a looming roadblock...
Even worse, the investigation revealed children had been tasked with cleaning up the toxic mess at...
Financial distress is leading some immigrants into lives as professional guinea pigs.
A reporter learns the importance of telling stories for communities rather than about them.
A reporter reflects on lessons from reporting on Cambodian refugees in California still grappling...
Many Pacific Islander communities suffer from high rates of diabetes and kidney disease. Less well-...
Reporting on long COVID while seeing its effects firsthand allowed me to better understand what my...
As women and mothers, we couldn’t understand how life could target vulnerable women like Leena so...
Street vendors have faced a long history of persecution in LA and elsewhere. Consider these...
Even when people were willing to talk about the issue generally, they weren’t willing to put a face...
The long line of cars waiting for food on that sizzling Saturday morning in Bloomington, California...
How are we supposed to cover the community as a whole when we can’t communicate with a large...
It's easy to feel trapped by the feeling that you need to see a story through simply because you’ve...
“It’s not the type of health crisis that you’re going to have neighbors come over and bring a...
How misadventures and the laughs than ensued helped one journalist build rapport and deepen his...
Government agencies do a poor job of gathering Native-specific data. A reporter finds that a turn...
A reporter spent a lot of time standing outside tiny home communities, trying to catch people...
A series of the health impacts of extreme heat puts the experiences of Fresno residents front and...
Uncontrolled asthma is rampant in central Milwaukee, to devastating effect.
A member of the Mixteco migrant community reflects on the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the...
Easy to say, harder to practice: Showing up in person opens up pieces of reporting that bring...
Puerto Ricans aren't eligible for all the benefits other U.S. citizens are. Two reporters are...
What we learned from telling the story of this deeply oppressive chapter of California queer history
To tell the story, we needed to track down a man who was committed to a state hospital over a half-...
Many families in rural America struggle to access obstetric care, and mothers of color, already...
Black women have higher hysterectomy rates than white patients, especially in the South. I wanted...
"As an Anglo reporter little versed in this science and history, I had a lot of catching up to do."
A new law meant to curb domestic abuse runs up against judges who know little about it.
“As people start to age they feel invisible, discarded, even,” said Priscilla Essert, during our...
"I never get emotional in interviews. But one day nearly did me in."
A reporting duo shares nine pieces of advice to keep in mind when covering childhood mental health.
"I was used to seeing homeless men and women leaving the shelter. This was different. Why so many...
A freelancer's neighborhood walks give rise to a story on LA's failure to maintain hygiene stations.
"I was so fixated on finding a Latino student it hadn’t dawned on me that there might be another...
Loopholes allow wealthier families and attorneys to avoid estate recovery, and in some counties the...
Getting the data was the hard part. Asking standout schools how they were curbing bullying was easy.
How one reporter used data to assess school climate in California.
Nonprofits were less helpful than expected, but Florida school districts helped a journalist find...
A reporter pivots between experts and data to try to understand why still so little is known about...
An investigative series on the state's child welfare system was powered by "a fairly simple data...
Who is checking to ensure these systems work as intended?
Patience, persistence and relationships all prove key in reporting the story.
Journalist and long COVID support group founder Fiona Lowenstein shares timely advice for reporters...
Reporting on sexual harassment and assault allegations at a Bay-area high school tested a reporter'...
A reporter finds people are hungry for spaces to talk about the mental health challenges...
A state health department issues an unusually restrictive response to a reporter's public records...
When reporting on trauma and death, strategies for coping become essential.
A reporter explains how she found women willing to speak out about substandard maternity care in...
By last fall, the pandemic's brutal toll on youth mental health had become clear.
Don't give up. Follow these tips to overcome data deserts in your reporting.
A reporter finds the limits of reporting from the living room and sets out for a Chicago classroom...
A reporter relfects on lessons learned while covering the mental health challenges confronting...
"The stress of my own personal experiences led me to dig deeper into how immigrant women were...
"For years, I avoided stories I deemed too personal. Until the day I couldn’t."
How are school systems coping with large influxes of immigrant children? A reporter reflects on...
A reporter reflects on lessons learned from an especially challenging story.
A reporter shares what she learned about taking care of yourself while reporting on grief-filled...
Are you staring down a daunting list of public records requests? Here are a few tips that can help.
Emerging research on toxic stress sheds light on entrenched disparities and points to new...
Consolidation is changing heatlh care — and how much it costs — in almost every corner of the...
Hard-won lessons from an investigation into ICE's failure to provide adequate medical care to...
Why the traditional journalistic process does not always work well for those repeatedly betrayed by...
For the survivors of the deadliest blaze in California history, the pandemic was a disaster upon a...
A bill that would increase workplace protections for domestic workers is now before California's...
Through my reporting and listening to young sexually active LGBTQ people, I learned there would...
"The experience of working with our subjects for more than a year changed my own ideas about...
Step one: listen to community questions before asking your own.
A reporter learns to diversify her tactics to find more diverse families for a series on the rise...
Carl and Malette Young struggled for more than a decade to find help for their adopted son, Marc,...
Finding a fixer to connect with reluctant sources was the first step.
The Navajo Nation's high rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses have taken on a new...
"My grief and frustration over JJ’s fate were compounded by all I learned about the effects of...
Utah has the lowest smoking rate in the nation, yet the biggest source of cancer deaths in the...
North Carolina has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the nation. As is the case in the...
How a reporter used data and documents to show how the state of Pennsylvania failed in its duty to...
While many uninsured individuals are low-income residents, upper-middle-income Californians also...
Many immigrants see America as a paradise full of opportunities, but find another reality: a series...
Reporting on county jails and jail deaths? Use these tips from Matt Brannon of the Redding Record...
The crisis is expected to dramatically worsen as the nationwide demand for in-home nursing...
In quick-hit coverage of health policy, it’s easy to skip the tough task of tracking down real...
Two brothers-in-law who live next door to one another in rural Northern California have chronic...
How two reporters used data to explore how California's ambitious health care initiatives could...
"I ultimately found a handful of good sources who were willing to share their personal housing...
Reporting this story really opened my eyes to how important it is to collectively think about how...
In the fires that devastated Paradise and Santa Rosa, kids were often the most vulnerable.
"Here I was, a stranger dropping into people’s lives, asking that they tell me their deeply...
"People talk to me about all sorts of health issues, even addiction and sexual assault. Elder abuse...
A reporter shares five key sources to help others exploring health care problems in California...
Roads are a key to everything, a reporter quickly finds out while traveling through the Navajo...
A reporter shares a handful of investigative reporting techniques that proved essential in...
How do you know when someone is ready to be interviewed about a trauma she has endured? And what do...
A journalist shares key lessons from reporting on the Puerto Rican government's failed responses to...
A story of why it pays to keep analyzing the data, even if it isn’t cooperative at first.
"As fellow news junkies, we talked about the increasing number of cases we reported on a daily...
Some life journeys start at a good day care center and end at the heights of academia. Some...
There was a lot going on in my head when I started reporting — was I the right person to write the...
As a journalist, I was out of my depth and definitely out of my comfort zone. But after weeks of...
Over the last decade, Congress has repeatedly flagged the abominable conditions in the South Dakota...
Finding people who are willing to talk about their STDs publicly can be a tall order for...
What happens to the growing number of drug-exposed babies? Answers "proved maddeningly difficult to...
How a reporting team overcame countless hurdles to tell a new story of how children are affected by...
A dynamic team blended traditional street reporting with innovative scientific testing for a hard-...
In the months after Hurricane Harvey slammed the Texas Gulf Coast, residents of small towns and...
James Causey returned to his old neighborhood in Milwaukee to take a sustained look at how young...
Who could possibly have any sort of objection to renovating a park? Those pushed out of their...
A reporter set out to discover why trauma rates were so high in the community of Paradise, Calif....
For 20 years, First 5 has used the tobacco tax revenue to finance health, education and other...
There is no way for an outsider to just parachute into a different culture and start writing about...
CapRadio’s health reporter Sammy Caiola spent six months exploring the reasons behind the high...
BuzzFeed reporter Stephanie Lee explains how she went about obtaining crucial emails between...
Finding the right people for your story is one of reporting's eternal challenges. One reporter...
Among the key takeaways: "Establish your credibility early and often with all of your potential...
An investigation into a Sacramento gun range ultimately spurred new legislation to better protect...
One consistent memory I have from reporting on California’s mental health system for low-income...
California has problems serving young children with disabilities. Reporter Jocelyn Wiener explains...
Since the Great Recession, Arizona has cut programs that help poor families and spent more money on...
In California’s county jails, a reporter finds far more obstacles to getting data on health care...
In California, Medicaid coverage among undocumented immigrants dropped, even as the broader...
A reporter discusses the difficult decisions that have to be made between telling deeply personal...
Two reporters share their tips and insights from reporting on health issues in Indian Country.
A reporter recounts his journey to find the stories that shed light on how Trump’s rhetoric and...
A FiveThirtyEight reporter on how she tackled an ambitious series on a huge, overlooked health...
“Have a plan, but expect to ditch it,” a news mentor drilled into my head 25 years ago. “If you’re...
A mysterious cluster of rare, fatal birth defects has devastated families in three rural...
"By the time I was finished, my reporting had covered not only the Valley’s marketing problem, but...
In an era when good data about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community remains elusive...
Even when persistence and dedication enable a reporter to find undocumented communities willing to...
"The magic is in how we listen and how we ask," writes reporter Gisela Telis. "When reporting on...
In Georgia, thousands of students are taken out of their schools and sent to centers where they are...
Many New Orleans children come from tough backgrounds and have been thrust into a new school system...
Data allowed reporter Kathleen McGrory to show gun accidents involving children were a growing...
For reporter Giles Bruce, it wasn't until he jettisoned all his preconceived notions about what was...
For an ambitious project on lead in Chicago, City Bureau started with the question: "How do we as...
The story of heroin in New Mexico's Rio Arriba County had been told too many times by the national...
Experts believe one reason the word gap is so prevalent is because it starts so early in life. But...
Reporter Richard Bammer set out to explore how overlooked migrant education centers are addressing...
It can be hard to find new, compelling ways of telling stories about well-known health issues. But...
In many Asian communities, mental illness remains mired in stigma. A reporter in Orange County,...
For some Californians living near the border, Mexico offers the promise of reliable health care at...
A data-driven look at opioid addiction in San Diego found that old assumptions about addiction...
In California’s Central Valley and rural north, more than a dozen hospitals have closed since the...
After living there for over a decade, I know San Francisco is uniquely situated when it comes to...
Bad housing has emerged as a key issue in California's Sonoma County races for elected office since...
Two reporters set out to answer a question: Was the horrific death of a mentally ill inmate in a...
"I had fair warning that gathering data on blue-green algae toxins in California was going to be an...
"Finding families touched by the death of a child was hard," writes Sammy Caiola of the...
A year after Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, a reporter returned to the...
The secretive world of pharmaceutical pricing is mired in opacity. To investigate how pricey...
A look at what happens to children who've lost parents to death, mental illness, addiction and...
For a reporting project on food insecurity in Native American communities, finding the data was...
In the southern U.S., tropical diseases such as Chagas disease, toxocariasis, leishmaniasis can...
"Finding women who would be candid about their stories of abuse was incredibly difficult,"...
Journalist Lottie Joiner recently set out to explore what happens to young African American men...
The health disparities between Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas are real. Reporter Alex...
In Asian American families, where the subject of sex is particularly taboo and parents may lack...
On Tuesday, National Fellow Michael LaForgia and two colleagues received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize...
"There were a few times when I felt I had reached a dead end," writes Patricia Wight. "I worried...
Most families didn't want to talk to SinoVision reporter Melody Cao about autism in their...
"It’s around 10 p.m. when I call a crisis worker for victims of domestic violence in remote...
The percentage of babies born to women who didn't receive prenatal care had increased...
Hawaiian parents were describing a foster care system that was biased against Hawaiians, yet...
As journalist Ada Calhoun "started casting around for potential good news in the child welfare...
How one reporter overcame closed courts and bad data to get the scoop on Arkansas' juvenile...
It started as a series of reports on the dangers Latino children face when they're not placed in...
KCRW reporter Avishay Artsy set out to report on ethnic disparities in cancer outcomes. After...
For her three-part series on the health effects of rising violent crime in Merced County,...
The infections that patients pick up inside hospitals can be debilitating and even deadly. Yet...
If you're pitching a story that’s going to take you off deck for dailies, it helps to have two...
A year after Thomas Eric Duncan died from Ebola after seeking care at a Texas hospital, what’s...
In the fields of Calif.'s Ventura County, some workers only speak Mixteco. The cultural and...
As a journalist, both homelessness and mental illness are uniquely challenging topics to report...
Nearly 60 hospitals have closed in the U.S. since 2010. In reporting on how hospital closures...
"As a journalist and as a person, there’s something therapeutic about being entrusted with...
Despite the numbers of Floridians stranded in a health policy no man’s land – earning too much...
When LA Times reporter Soumya Karlamangla started looking into health care policies affecting...
For three months this year, I spent time with some of the sickest, most expensive patients in...
Reporter Lisa Bernard-Kuhn tackled an ambitious project looking at how doctor offices and...
The strategy of using cell phones and texts to nudge people toward healthier decisions makes a...
There's little data available on in-home caregiving, which makes reporting on the issue...
Two Herald reporters are being honored with the Selden Ring Award this week for their "Innocents...
Reporter Frank Gluck recently spent five months reporting on how Alzheimer’s disease has...
In Baltimore, violence has marred countless lives. But Baltimore Sun reporter Andrea McDaniels...
Last year marked a turning point for people living with chronic hep C and public radio reporter...
We've all heard the stories of hospital closures, but what about when hospital beds go unfilled...
When I started reporting on Montana's "aging tsunami," I wanted to know what solutions held the...
A strongly reported series examining a new program targeting 'super-utilizers' in Pennsylvania...
Despite Wendy Davis' filibuster, Texas lawmakers passed strict new abortion regulations in 2013...
The Michael Brown case has come to symbolize popular disillusionment with finding justice, but...
Southern California's Orange County has a reputation as an affluent playground, making the...
A reporting trip that set out to investigate the causes behind a mysterious childhood cancer...
When I tackled the topic of loneliness as a 2013 National Health Journalism Fellowship project,...
By 2012, when I started my fellowship project, several journalists -- in Philadelphia and...
The U.S. locks up more individuals per capita than any other country in the world. We have 2.2...
We already knew about air pollution's link to asthma, heart disease, lung cancer, and shorter...
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking -- using water, sand and chemicals at high-pressure to crack...
I had a sense that care for the undocumented took place in the shadows of the U.S. health system...
Four 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalists give an inside look at "Prognosis: Profits," a series about...
One of the public health trends these days appears to be a focus on the built environment. Here'...
Photographer and multimedia journalist Alison Yin, a 2012 National Health Journalism Fellow,...
Why does mental health seem to get hit so much harder by cuts than other arenas? What do these...
Asthma is the most common cause of hospital stays for children. It can strike anyone, but has...
The Affordable Care Act establishes national standards for health insurance benefits. Should...
With all the media coverage of health reform, there has been surprisingly little reporting about...
Recent developments in Richmond, Va., made a story looking at how where you live affects your...
Indian country is a very different world from the one most of us mainstream reporters inhabit....
The tobacco industry may not have the commercial presence in the U.S. it once did, but cigarette...
Minimally-regulated residential care for the elderly is a fast growing, less expensive...
Help wanted. Pay not so great. Excellent chance of injury. You’ll never see an ad like this in...
It’s not easy for journalists to undertake testing on humans, nor should it be. But there are...
Journalist Paul Kleyman, who has covered aging issues for more than 20 years, offers tips for...
Get tips for covering the brave new world of personal genomics from a genetic scientist and...
Angelo Solis, a homeless alcoholic, racked up nearly $1 million in medical charges over three...
Environmental health reporting sheds light on some of the most important decisions a person can...
Veteran food policy journalist Christopher Cook offers context on "food deserts" and how to...
Like writing about abortion or animal rights, writing about vaccines inevitably raises the ire of...
Two journalists offer tips for your reporting from their award-winning series on the striking...
Here's a recap of the latest developments on the health reform front, along with some helpful...
Media coverage of health care quality often hinges on a doctor's personality, rather than...
How do you tell the stories of children or teenagers who have stigmatizing health problems...
Follow the money. That simple phrase – though never uttered...
My odyssey into the world of tuberculosis began with a simple remark by a well-connected friend...
When it comes to climate change, the most important impacts of the emissions...
A "show-me-the-evidence" health journalist offers tips on covering alternative medicine without...
Probably every health reporter in the country has been asked at one time or another to write a...
Eleven million Americans have eating disorders. Here are tips on covering this complex disease...
The national story of poor dental health and its implications — former U.S. Surgeon General...
Although scientists and public health officials have long worried that an avian flu virus would...
Imagine if your doctor asked your 12-year-old son to explain to you that you had just been...
With the rise in MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant infections, the few that prove dangerous...
Not many reporters want to write about homeless people – and not many editors want to read about...
Journalists have to ask hard questions about where sources get their money – and about the...
Journalist Emily Schmidt had a rare opportunity to humanize the often-hidden story of domestic...
Native Americans experience higher disease rates than other Americans for problems ranging from...
It started on March 20, 2006, with what I thought was a one-shot story about the health care...
Obesity is visible — walk down the street and you bump into it. Diabetes, on the other hand, is...
The best HIV/AIDS coverage goes beyond the latest statistics of how many people are infected or the...
Craft
Publishing shorter pieces on a regular basis helped keep sustained attention on the issue.
An experienced journalist reflects on the learning curve that came with tackling an in-depth series.
It started with a deceptively simple question: Why are there more trees in some parts of town than...
Until I started interviewing survivors of sexual assault, I never thought of a source as someone I...
Data pointed me in the right direction. But getting out in the community revealed the struggles...
What do you do for stories that have no available dataset — what if no one has asked people about...
News stories about health care policy are often way too dry and boring. The missing ingredient?...
When it came to finding truly surprising patterns or stories within the Alabama data, I hit wall...
By partnering with teens, a reporter seeking a deeper understanding of health in local communities...
The initial statistics shocked me. It turns out, I hadn’t seen anything yet.
We were about 30 seconds into our first look at the California Department of Education’s chronic...
Ultimately, I had no data for my data project. So, under the advice of data guru Paul Overberg of...
With deadlines looming, I was able to publish a feature-length story just a week after receiving...
If you were to seek opioid addiction treatment for yourself or a loved one, what are the chances...
When I set out to explore disparities in sexually transmitted diseases, I noticed few outlets...
When is OK to offer a desperate source a ride, or a bottle of Tylenol? Knowing when to intervene is...
A questionnaire helped a reporter find more than a dozen Louisville residents of different...
A Los Angeles Times reporter spent a year reporting on the high schools in LA County surrounded by...
"One of the first lessons we learned was the need for patience with survivors. We were often asking...
Journalists seeking to include the voices of survivors in their stories should start with the most...
The tide of ER visits rose in Southern California after Obamacare became law, growing about 27...
The Sacramento Bee’s Angela Hart shares how she got a handle on a huge story: the potential move to...
Undocumented immigrants’ health issues are almost always ignored by the mainstream media. One...
In reporting on epidemic levels of back pain among immigrant laborers, a Telemundo correspondent...
"If newsrooms want coverage to be diverse, newsrooms must back up that aim with an investment of...
"Data is the backbone of good reporting, but people make the audience care," writes broadcast...
Several months into their investigation, two reporters realized they lacked one key element: "The...
Climate change is making the problem of urban heat a growing health risk. But reporting on the...
As women go to jail at staggering rates, Dallas Morning News reporter Cary Aspinwall tapped into...
Buffalo News reporter Tiffany Lankes shows how data can create a story framework that comes alive...
Data journalist Leonardo Castaneda offers reporters a detailed tutorial on how to analyze — and...
AP journalist Meghan Hoyer provides an updated dataset and guide to help reporters better...
"As a data journalist, let me state my bias: I do not like scorecards," writes veteran data...
California's psychiatric hospitals can be highly dangerous places, both for patients and staff....
One reporter's intrepid data quest has given reporters nationwide a new look at how their local...
How one reporter "fell down a data rabbit hole" while investigating how many Medicaid patients were...
What to do when you can't find the right research for your story? A Florida newspaper pursued a...
Are California hospitals doing a better job of preventing serious mistakes in the wake of a state...
While nearly half of Florida's kids rely on Medicaid, the program has battled persistent problems...
Before Jackie Valley tackled her series on the unmet mental health needs of Nevada's children, “...
In reporting her series on mental illness in Shasta County, Alayna Shulman didn't find the data she...
A deep dive into the data on federal pay-for-performance programs for hospitals turned up a few key...
African American men in North Carolina suffer from some of the world’s highest rates of prostate...
Reporter Liza Gross was seeking a fresh way to convey the risky environmental conditions facing...
Reporter Tom Corwin of The Augusta Chronicle was shocked to learn of 82 unexpected deaths in 2013...
Photojournalist David Gross hatched a plan to crowdfund a project in which he'd photograph and...
A big national health report or new story breaks, and you'd like to cover the news with a local or...
To really engage audiences and maximize the impact of a big reporting project, it's vital to plan...
Last fall, we had no idea how the Obamacare rollout was going to go. So Politico's Jennifer...
Reporters covering stories of people in stressful situations can find themselves struggling with "...
When reporters strive to foster community engagement, it not only stands to make for better...
Creating custom hormone therapy is big business for compounding pharmacies. Regulated by state...
It is difficult not to view poverty-stricken farmworkers as victims and pesticide manufacturers (...
For the Dennis Hunt grant, Burt Hubbard and I-News produced a package of stories including video,...
Shortly after two teens were shot in 2011 by another boy who mistakenly thought they were part of a...
Some years ago, I began hearing from my sources that I should investigate the generic drug industry...
When I think about lessons learned in the past six months, two phrases come to mind: time...
To document Rubbertown, Ky., residents’ claims of unusually high rates of disease, I needed hard...
In 1973, nearly every Michigan resident was exposed to a toxic chemical. As I brought this story...
At first, investigating what kind of discipline the Wisconsin Medical Examining Board was meting...
How could legislation designed to protect people from suspected cancer-causing compounds in...
When it comes to health issues, the southeastern corner of Virginia usually is pretty average. That...
Former Bloomberg reporter Rob Waters describes his two-year-long quest to interview the “Berlin...
Karen Weintraub, a former editor at The Boston Globe, offers tips for editing health and science...
Pairing English-language and ethnic media to report stories can be rewarding and result in great...
There’s hardly a health story out there that cannot benefit from some good data – from estimates of...
Pulling off a narrative story in the medical world requires a different kind of story thinking and...
Get tips on covering medical research stories from veteran AP reporter Lauran Neergaard.
The first step in asking a stranger to open up to you is to follow the golden rule: Treat others...
Rural adults are older, sicker, less educated, less well paid and less likely to have health...