Medical research can often seem far removed from a local health beat. All the statistics, the jargon, the complicated graphs can make it easy to forget that behind every number there’s a real person. In fact, medical studies can be great jumping off points for local stories. The key is finding the people who are at the heart of the research.
We asked health reporter Eryn Brown to share how she recently turned a medical study from Yale University into a poignant local story for the Los Angeles Times. In bringing the research home, she shined a light on the heartbreaking ways low-income mothers have to stretch diapers when they can’t afford a steady supply.
The story is part of a recent push in research to “operationalize” poverty by documenting the concrete ways income impacts health and quality of life. These kinds of studies are starting to give us a glimpse into the hardships faced by people on the fringes of society and offer reporters some meaningful stories to tell.
Read about how Brown came across the story and how she reported it.
