Overview: these stories show the breadth of my work as a Health Beat Reporter — combining investigative, enterprise, expository and breaking-news journalism with an emphasis on public health, health policy and health economics.
“Where New York City Kids…” — We amassed vaccination data from New York City, New York state and New Jersey. We focused on the lax enforcement of vaccination laws among New York City’s public schools, and we published a lookup tool for people to see the exemption rate of their local schools — the most comprehensive one ever published in this region. This was enterprise journalism at its best, one that relied on collaboration in the newsroom to highlight facts and shed light on an issue that is often clouded by emotion and misinformation. It was picked up widely and led at least one school community to clarify its policies.
“What’s in the Air…” — We approached Columbia University climate scientists and environmental epidemiologists and after years of preliminary research and experiment design, in 2015 we launched a research project to investigate pollution exposure among urban exercisers. WNYC is the media arm of the multi-year, NIH-funded study, recruiting and deploying ‘civilian scientists’ with state-of-the-art air monitors to gather data on fine-particle and black carbon at street level. We then juxtapose that information with real-time respiratory, heartbeat and blood pressure data and a GPS mapping tool to measure actual exposures around the city at different times of the day and year. On the radio, we have so far produced two features, a lengthy segment on our call-in program, the Brian Lehrer Show and guest appeared on the nationally syndicated Science Friday. On TV, our collaborators at WNBC also did a story about the project. Online, ‘citizen scientist cyclists’ can use an interactive we developed with Columbia to overlay their bike routes against public pollution maps. We plan to broaden this resource and expand the study next year, and the Columbia team is exploring collaborations with environmental health researchers in other cities. By the end of the project, we hope to gain not only unique insights about pollution inhalation patterns but also an app local people can use to minimize their exposure.
“Outbreak Pushes Water Treatment Crews…” — Our coverage of one of the largest-ever community outbreaks of Legionnaire’s Disease had many prongs. In this quick-turnaround feature, we explored what it takes to clean and maintain cooling towers and how some of them apparently become disseminators of the legionella bacteria. Once again, WNYC played a role in calming fears with facts, talking to people in the neighborhood most affected, and not dropping the story after the tabloids and evening newscasts moved on.
“Confusion And High Costs …” — We look at how even after two full years of insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion, people still don’t understand how “Obamacare” works and are still falling through the cracks.
“Breath of Life …” — Focusing on a dying woman who needs a lung transplant, we report on why it’s particularly deadly to live in New York, which has the lowest organ donor registration rate in the country. This is an example of longer form storytelling doing more to explain a chronic problem than any straight-ahead news report ever could. We feature a potential organ recipient who generously shares her fears, her challenges and her unflagging hope with our listeners.