William Heisel

Suppose you arrive at work only to be told by your editor that today you're writing about a questionable new study claiming that radiation from the nuclear meltdown in Japan is causing thyroid disorders in U.S. babies. How should you proceed?

When an online news service wrote a story about potential health effects in the U.S. from the nuclear meltdown in Japan, people were frightened. The article was an act of fearmongering that could've been easily avoided.

The question-mark headline is one way publications evoke claims that might not be supported by the evidence. Consider the alarmist reporting on studies that claimed post-tsunami nuclear fallout from Japan has sickened U.S. babies.

Here’s how journalism should work. When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) met with resistance to find out about health-care-associated infections in the country’s hospitals, it persisted.

The CDC's research on valley fever's impact in California and Arizona was both an unexpected validation of the Reporting on Health Collaborative's work and an encouragement to do more of the same.

Because I have encouraged health writers to think a little more like car writers, I took both HospitalInspections.org and Medicare’s Hospital Compare website for a comparison test drive.

AHCJ launched its new searchable database of hospital inspections this month. It’s hard to overstate the achievement of merely persuading a government agency as large as CMS to relinquish any amount of control over records.

Whether the subject is a money-squandering government agency or a looming public health threat or a failing school system, reporters want to be able to say something changed as a result of their reporting. Momentum might get going after a story, but continuing it is another matter.

Bob Pack had some interesting ideas for how to improve California’s prescription drug tracking system (CURES). Most of them remain just that: interesting ideas.

A grieving father set out to create a system that might prevent other lives from being lost at the hands of a drug-dazed driver. Ten years later, he's still waiting for the system he created to be fully realized.