About Jeff Porter
Jeff Porter is the special projects director for AHCJ and plays a lead role in planning conferences, workshops and other training events. He also leads the organization's data collection and data instruction efforts.
Boston’s historic waterfront will be the backdrop of Health Journalism 2013, AHCJ’s annual conference March 14-17.
Donald Berwick |
David Goldhill |
Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman |
Farzad Mostashari |
Deval Patrick |
Held at the Seaport Boston Hotel and the adjacent Seaport World Trade Center, the conference will gather hundreds of journalists as they take part in skill-building workshops, sit in on panel discussions and visit area research sites. The conference, produced by the association’s Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, features world-class speakers, important news briefings and helpful sessions all aimed at aiding reporters, editors and news producers in better covering the latest health issues.
Kickoff speakers for March 14 will include Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston physicians Jerome Groopman and Pamela Hartzband.
The conference begins early that day with two busloads of journalists who pre- register for field trips to local research and medical facilities, and a series of class-like settings designed to bring hands-on training in two tracks of workshops. The kick- off speakers and opening reception will round out the day.
Patrick has seen the state’s expansion of health insurance coverage, now at 98 percent of Massachusetts residents. Groopman is the Dina and Raphael Recanati Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He writes regularly about biology and medicine for lay audiences as a staff writer at The New Yorker. Hartzband is an attending physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School.
The two have coauthored articles in The New England Journal of Medicine on the changing culture of clinical care. They have addressed the impact of electronic records, uniform practice guidelines, mon- etary incentives, the Internet and economic language used to describe medical professionals. They are bimonthly columnists for ACP Internist, the publication of the American College of Physicians. They have written for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and now their first book together, “Your Medical Mind: How to Decide What is Right for You.” In 2011, each received the Humanism in Medicine Award from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.
March 15 and 16 focus on panels covering a range of health issues – business, public policy, public health, medical research, clinical health care, journalism and global health. The panels will feature experts in research, policy and practice, as well as experienced and knowledgeable journalists. Some sessions will provide extra advice for freelance writers, and the annual Freelance PitchFest will provide them an opportunity to meet with assigning editors and potentially land assignments.
Other notable speakers include David Goldhill, president and CEO of GSN (formerly the Game Show Network), and author of “Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father – And How We Can Fix It,” and Farzad Mostashari, M.D., Sc.M., national coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Continue reading →
Health Journalism 2014, the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists, will take place in Denver next year, AHCJ has announced.
Randi Belisomo, co-founder of Life Matters Media:
