Staff
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Jeff Porter, Special Projects Director
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Cynthia Craft, Director of EngagementCraft is the new director of engagement for AHCJ, joining the organization after an extensive career in daily journalism, including a decade on the health care beat. She will play a key role in daily operations of the association including membership, outreach efforts and online resources. Craft most recently worked as a senior writer at The Sacramento Bee, having also worked for the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Times Herald and the California Journal. While freelancing, her articles appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, California HealthLine and Kaiser Health News. She is a graduate of several fellowship programs, including AHCJ’s National Library of Medicine and Regional Health Journalism fellowships. As a Knight International Journalism fellow, she spent three years in Peru as a visiting professor of journalism. She has won several journalism awards, including sharing in spot news Pulitzer Prizes as a reporter and editor and a Sigma Delta Chi National Excellence in Public Service Award as a project editor. (@cynthiahcraft) cynthia@healthjournalism.org | Phone: 573-884-8103 |
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Student Assistants |
Elizabeth Cassidy, Office AssistantCassidy is a senior at the University of Missouri pursuing a dual degree in psychology and journalism with an emphasis in health, science and environmental writing. She has worked as an enterprise reporter and copy editor for the Columbia Missourian. Cassidy is from the Kansas City area. Zia Kelly, Office AssistantKelly is a sophomore at the University of Missouri pursuing a degree in journalism with an emphasis in science, health and environmental writing. She works as a reporter for The Maneater, a campus newspaper, and covers MU's administration. Kelly is from Lawrence, Kan., but she only cheers for the Jayhawks during March Madness. |
Editorial Contributors |
Joseph Burns, Topic Leader/InsuranceBurns provides resources for AHCJ members to cover the complex and changing landscape of health insurance through blog posts, tip sheets, articles and links to sources. An independent journalist, Burns has been covering health care since 1991 and writes frequently about health policy and the business of health care for a variety of publications, including Hospitals & Health Networks, Managed Care magazine, Ophthalmology Management and The Dark Report. One of the founding editors of the Practice Options newsletters, Burns has edited books on health care and business strategies for Faulkner & Gray and Panel Publishers. From 1991 to 1994, he was editor-in-chief of Business & Health magazine and later was a contributing editor and author of a monthly column for Managed Healthcare Executive magazine. He was the founding editor of The Financial Manager, a magazine for accountants and other business strategists. Burns, based in Massachusetts, began his career as a newspaper reporter in Connecticut. (@jburns18) Susan Heavey, Topic Leader/Social Determinants and DisparitiesHeavey provides AHCJ members the resources they need to cover the root causes of health care gaps by writing blog posts, tip sheets, articles and other material. Based in Washington, D.C., Heavey covered health care for more than a decade, reporting on health care regulation and policy before later focusing on the intersection of health, poverty and demographics. While on the beat at Reuters, she wrote about everything from brain stimulation and clot-grabbing snake-like devices to drug safety and biosimilars. She also helped cover Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. She previously wrote about health for washingtonpost.com and KidsHealth. Heavey was a 2013 fellow at the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and previously with the National Institutes of Health/Dartmouth University “Medicine in the Media" program and the now-shuttered Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland. She has been an adjunct professor at American University's School of Communications. (@susanheavey) Tara Haelle, Topic Leader/Medical StudiesHaelle guides journalists through the jargon-filled shorthand of science and research and enable them to translate the evidence into accurate information that their readers can grasp. Haelle is a freelance journalist and multimedia photographer who has particularly focused on medical studies over the past five years. She particularly specializes in reporting on vaccines, pediatrics, maternal health, obesity, nutrition and mental health. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, The Washington Post, Politico, Slate, NOVA, Wired and Science, and she writes regularly for HealthDay, Frontline Medical Communications, Forbes and her parenting science blog Red Wine & Apple Sauce. She's co-writing an evidence-based parenting book due in April 2016. (@tarahaelle) Joanne Kenen, Topic Leader/Health ReformKenen, the health editor for Politico, is a Washington-based writer who specializes in health and health policy. She provides resources to help AHCJ members cover the complexities of implementing health care reform. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, The Washington Post, Slate, the Washingtonian, Kaiser Health News, Health Affairs, Miller-McCune, the American Prospect, AARP Magazine and numerous other publications. She was the senior writer for the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation, and a Kaiser Media Fellow in a 2006-07, where she wrote extensively about palliative medicine, hospice, and aging. A longtime Reuters correspondent in New York, Florida/the Caribbean, and Washington, she has covered everything from voodoo festivals to U.S. presidential campaigns and she spent more than a decade covering health policy on Capitol Hill. Thanks to her particularly wakeful second son, she is co-author of a parenting book, "The Sleeplady's Good Night, Sleep Tight." Earlier in her career, she did a lot of reporting from Latin America, and co-authored a book on Costa Rica. (@joannekenen) Mary Otto, Topic Leader/Oral HealthOtto is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who began writing about oral health at The Washington Post, where she covered social issues, including health care and poverty, for eight years. In 2007, she wrote about 12-year-old Deamonte Driver, a Maryland child covered by Medicaid who died after bacteria from a dental infection spread to his brain. The death of the boy spurred congressional hearings, a revamping of Maryland’s Medicaid dental system and increased attention to oral health access for Medicaid children nationwide. After leaving the Post in a newsroom downsizing, Otto spent an academic year as a 2009-10 Knight Science Journalism Fellow studying oral health and public health at Harvard University. Her ongoing exploration of barriers to dental care in poor communities has been assisted by a California Endowment Dennis A. Hunt Fund grant. Otto has continued to write about oral health and other health and social issues as a freelance writer for the Post, as a contributing writer for an online publication for oral health professionals called DrBicuspid.com, and as the editor of Street Sense, a newspaper produced and sold by homeless men and women in Washington, D.C. (@mottomatic) Liz Seegert, Topic Leader/AgingSeegert is leading the effort to provide resources to help AHCJ members cover the complexities of aging by writing blog posts, tip sheets, articles and other resources. She has more than 25 years’ experience in print, broadcast and online media. Her journalism experience includes stints in Boston as a general assignment news reporter for public radio and a writer for all-news radio, and as a TV news associate producer/writer in New York City. Several years in the corporate world helped to sharpen her writing and immersed her in the world of health and wellness. Since 1995, she has flown solo as a writer/reporter. She is a regular contributor to the HealthCetera, blog and to the award-winning HealthStyles show (WBAI/Pacifica), both part of the Center for Health, Media and Policy at Hunter College, where she is also a senior fellow. (@lseegert) Bara Vaida, Topic leader/Infectious DiseasesVaida is covering the complex and changing topic and helping journalists recognize emerging stories, understand the science of diseases, as well as prevention and cures. She has been a journalist for more than 25 years and a freelancer since 2011. She has worked for the National Journal, Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg News and has been a guest on numerous radio and television shows. Vaida has written extensively about health care policy and the Affordable Care Act as a contributing writer with Kaiser Health News. Her stories on the business and legal issues raised by health reform, as well as special interest influence on health care policy, have been published in the McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, National Public Radio, Politico, and the Washington Post. She recently wrote an in-depth report for CQ Researcher titled "Pandemic Threat: Is the world prepared for the next outbreak?" (@barav) Rebecca Vesely, Topic Leader/Health Information TechnologyVesely is helping journalists understand and cover this fast-changing and increasingly important aspect of information technology in health care. Vesely started writing about health IT in the late 1990s as a reporter and then Washington bureau chief for Wired News. Since then, she has covered health care as a staff reporter for the Oakland Tribune, the Bay Area News Group and Modern Healthcare magazine. She was a founding editor of Business 2.0 magazine, chronicling the first dot com boom. She directed a short-lived but award-winning social media site for teen girls called ChickClick. She served as a contributing reporter to iHealthBeat.org and California Healthline, covering California health policy, telehealth and mobile health. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and she has penned guides on electronic prescribing and health information exchange for patients and providers. (@rebvesely) |
Porter plays a lead role in planning conferences, workshops and other training events. He has trained journalists to use databases, spreadsheets and online resources since 1998 and continues that work for AHCJ members. Before joining AHCJ in 2008, he served six years as the database library director for Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. In that position, he conducted and directed data analysis for broadcast and print investigative projects, served as lead instructor for computer-assisted reporting boot camps, and provided journalism training across the United States and overseas. He has served as a CAR instructor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Previously, he worked 20 years as an award-winning newspaper journalist, served as adjunct college faculty, and co-created and hosted a weekly radio program. His last newspaper job was at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where he served as CAR specialist, combining traditional investigative reporting techniques with advanced data analysis tools. 
Pia Christensen, Managing Editor/Online Services
Melissa Acton, Fiscal Officer
J. Chris Colwell, Web Producer