I have reported on health for most of my career. My work as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register exposed problems with the fertility industry, the trade in human body parts and the use of illegal drugs in sports. I helped create a first-of-its-kind report card judging hospitals on a wide array of measures for a story that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I was one of the lead reporters on a series of stories about lead in candy, a series that also was a finalist for the Pulitzer.For the Center for Health Journalism (previously known as Reporting on Health), I have written about investigative health reporting and occasionally broke news on my column, Antidote. I also was the project editor on the Just One Breath collaborative reporting series.  These days, for the University of Washington, I now work as the Executive Director for Insitutue for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Client Services, a social enterprise. You can follow me on Twitter @wheisel.

Articles

Know Your Source: Estimating Health Trends by Connecting Data Dots

Many people think that large health trend studies in high-income countries rely on “hard data,” while in low-income countries the numbers must be mostly estimates. In fact, researchers make estimates everywhere because, the data from vital statistics, censuses and surveys all have their limitations.

Know Your Source: From Cradle to Grave, Vital Records Tell a Story

Tracking basic human events has an incredible downstream effect on measuring and making sense of health trends. Vital registration helps policymakers take targeted action to improve health. For example, the CDC has a National Birth Defects Prevention Study that relies partly on birth certificates.