Reporter Liza Gross was seeking a fresh way to convey the risky environmental conditions facing California farming communities. But after running into a series of data swamps, she turned to experts for help and unexpectedly found her story in the strawberry fields of Oxnard, Calif.
With Biomonitoring California, state health and environmental officials have hit an early milestone in their efforts to discover which industrial chemicals are making their way into the bodies of residents. Research has shown that chemical exposure can seriously disrupt cellular function over time.
The hardest part of reporting on the health implications of Central Valley rivers was not the research or content, but finding the right characters for the stories. In the end, a radio reporter discovered the best way to find the characters that brought his stories to life was on the river itself.
California leads the nation when it comes to fostering the health of undocumented immigrants, according to a recent report. Meanwhile, state legislators are considering legislation that would expand coverage to undocumented residents.
Reporter Kathleen O'Brien of the New Jersey Star-Ledger stayed flexible in her reporting and ultimately uncovered system-wide computer problems that were only affecting New Jersey's poor. Here she shares the lessons she learned while working on the project.
Even as the ACA transforms the nation’s health care system, its future remains uncertain. But no matter what happens, the law and its impact will remain a central subject for health care journalists for years to come, as AHCJ 2015 panelists Sarah Kliff and Julie Appleby explained.
Without Medicaid expansion, South Florida’s low-income residents have found out the hard way that the healthcare safety net designed to catch people before they hit bottom is no substitute for insurance.
With legislators seemingly deadlocked on Medicaid expansion in Florida, residents in the “coverage gap” are stitching together their medical care through personal ingenuity, half doses of medicines and low-cost clinics. It’s exhausting work, especially when you’re sick.
A recent report found big differences in how counties are handling California’s estimated 3 million uninsured. Some county safety net programs are serving very few residents, raising questions of whether such counties are adequately adapting to meet the needs of the remaining uninsured.
A new survey based on text messages finds that most Californians with health insurance are satisfied with their coverage and ability to get appointments. But the survey also found the coverage sign-up process poses big hurdles for the majority of uninsured respondents.
