Board of Directors
• AHCJ board service: Responsibilities, rights, restrictions and rewards
• Running for a seat on the board of directors
Meeting minutes 
Officers |
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President
Felice J. Freyer is a health care reporter for The Boston Globe, where she has covered almost every aspect of health and medicine, with a focus on public health, mental health and addiction. During the pandemic she embedded at a hospital ICU, revealed the plight of covid “long-haulers” and tracked the vaccine roll-out. Before the pandemic, she wrote series on chronic pain and on recovery from addiction. Previously, Freyer was the medical writer for The Providence (R.I.) Journal. She has served on the AHCJ Board of Directors since 2009, leading AHCJ's Right to Know Committee, which intervenes and speaks out when journalists encounter roadblocks to information. The committee has met with HHS public affairs officials to push for greater transparency, held yearly workshops, and established a portal for tracking and responding to information blockades. Follow her on Twitter at @felicejfreyer or send email to felice.freyer@globe.com. |
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Vice President
Gideon Gil is a managing editor of Stat, which he joined at its founding in 2015, overseeing investigative journalism, enterprise, and science coverage. He was the health and science editor at The Boston Globe for a decade and a medical reporter and an editor at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., for 19 years. As a reporter and an editor, he worked on stories recognized with three Pulitzer Prizes. A 2014-15 Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT, he was first elected to the AHCJ board in 2011, was chair of the local planning committee for Health Journalism 2013, and has chaired the membership and finance committees. Follow him on Twitter at @GideonGil or send email to Gideon.Gil@statnews.com. |
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Treasurer
Jeanne Erdmann is a longtime health and science writer based in Missouri. She has written for many publications including Discover, Real Simple, Nature, Science News, The Washington Post, Nature Medicine and WebMD. Jeanne chairs AHCJ's Freelance Committee and Finance and Development Committee, and coordinates the freelance PitchFest. She is also co-founder and editor-at-large at The Open Notebook, a craft-focused website for science and health writers. She is the chair of AHCJ's Freelance Committee. You can follow her on Twitter at @jeanne_erdmann or send email to jeanne.erdmann@gmail.com. |
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Secretary
Since July 2022, Sabriya has led a team that focuses on bolstering health coverage about equity, race, and poverty in the South and Texas. Previously, she wrote about the business of health care for The Dallas Morning News, covered quality and safety issues in U.S. hospitals and health systems for Modern Healthcare, and produced television and digital medical news stories for CNN. Most recently, she was the Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism at the University of Georgia, where she trained young reporters interested in writing about health, medicine, and science. Rice serves as board secretary and co-chair of the Right to Know Committee. You can follow her on Twitter at @sabriyarice or send email to sabriyar@kff.org. |
Directors |
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Laura Beil
Laura Beil is a freelance journalist specializing in medicine, health policy and science. She was the recipient of the Victor Cohn Prize for Medical Science Reporting in 2018. A former medical reporter for the Dallas Morning News, her work has appeared in The New York Times, ProPublica, Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, Texas Monthly, Men's Health, and Science News. She has reported and hosted the podcasts Dr. Death, Bad Batch, The Vaping Fix, and Sympathy Pains. Follow her on Twitter at @LJBeil or send email to laura@laurabeil.com. |
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Randy Dotinga
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Carrie Feibel
Carrie Feibel is a senior health editor on NPR's Science Desk. She leads NPR's health reporting collaboration with Kaiser Health News and public radio stations across the country. Previously, she was KQED's health editor in San Francisco and the health reporter at Houston Public Radio. She also worked for the Houston Chronicle, The (Bergen, N.J.) Record, and the AP. She has been on the AHCJ board since 2018 and is the current chair of the Contest Committee. Follow her on Twitter at @carrierfeibel or send email to cfeibel@npr.org |
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Joyce Frieden
Joyce Frieden is Washington editor at MedPage Today, an online news publication for doctors and other health care providers; she oversees MedPage’s Washington, D.C., coverage. She has covered medicine and health policy for more than 30 years, specializing in news affecting physicians. She has written for UPI, Reuters Health, and WebMD, and served as editor of the International Medical News Group’s Clinical Endocrinology News. She has served for three years on AHCJ’s Right to Know Committee. She spent several years as a freelancer and has moderated panels at several AHCJ annual conferences, participated as an editor at the Freelance PitchFest and spent several years helping coordinate the association’s Washington, D.C., chapter. j.frieden@medpagetoday.com https://twitter.com/joycefr |
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Marlene Harris-Taylor
Marlene Harris-Taylor, currently directs community-focused news coverage for Ideastream Public Media the NPR/PBS affiliate in Cleveland Ohio, which includes managing the health reporters. Marlene is also member of the AHCJ Executive Committee and was chair of the Membership Committee for several years. Prior to moving into leadership roles, she was a senior health reporter at Ideastream for more than three years and her reporting earned numerous television and radio awards. Marlene has had a wide and varied career as a journalist including, working as the Medical Editor for the Toledo Blade newspaper, hosting an award-winning public affairs program on WBGU-PBS, and working as a producer for NPR’s Morning Edition program. She was also a 2016-17 AHCJ Regional Health Journalism Fellow. Marlene is also a board member for the Press Club of Cleveland. She is a graduate of the Ohio State University and has a master’s degree from Miami University of Ohio. Follow her on Twitter at @marlenetaylor48 or send email to Marlene.Harris-Taylor@ideastream.org. |
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Christine Herman
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Sebastián Martínez Valdivia
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Deborah Schoch
Deborah Schoch, based in Long Beach., Calif., is a freelance reporter with outlets including the New York Times, AARP and Medscape/WebMD. She probes health issues in communities across the country. She is a member of the AHCJ Right-to-Know Committee and the Freelance Committee, chairing its new subcommittee on mentoring. Earlier, Deborah spent 18 years with the Los Angeles Times before helping launch the USC-based Center for Health Reporting. There she crisscrossed California to help local newspapers cover health issues. A native of upstate New York, she shared in two Pulitzer Prizes with the LA Times staff and won an AHCJ first place prize in community journalism. She was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, where she studied science and law. Follow her on Twitter at @deborahschoch or send email to deborah.schoch@gmail.com. |
Randy Dotinga, a California-based journalist, has been a freelance reporter for more than 20 years, with work appearing in the Washington Post, MedPage Today, and the Christian Science Monitor. The longtime advocate for journalists has served as president of the American Society of Journalists & Authors from 2014-2016, as well as the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists board of directors for eight years.
Christine Herman is the managing editor of Side Effects Public Media, a health reporting collaboration involving NPR stations across the Midwest. In her recent role as health reporter at Illinois Public Media, she reported extensively on mental health, access to health care for vulnerable populations and other public health issues, reaching national audiences through the NPR/Kaiser Health News reporting partnership. Christine is a 2018 Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism fellow and a 2016 AHCJ Great Lakes Reporting Fellow. Christine earned her Ph.D. in chemistry and master's in journalism from the University of Illinois. You can follow her on Twitter at 
Sebastián Martínez Valdivia is a health reporter and documentary filmmaker who focuses on access to care in rural and immigrant communities. A native Spanish speaker and lifelong Missouri resident, Martínez is interested in the often overlooked and under-covered world of immigrant life in the rural Midwest. He has a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism and a master's degree in documentary journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism. Martínez also teaches an introductory productions skills course at the Missouri School of Journalism. Aside from public health, his other interests include conservation, climate change and ecology.