Whether they’re battling insurance companies or navigating a serious illness, patients are at the heart of health journalism. Thankfully, many of them are willing to share intimate personal details to give us — and our readers — a window into life with a serious medical condition. At the December AHCJ Lunch & Learn, freelancers shared ideas about how to find patients who are willing to tell their stories and discussed some sensitivities involved with this reporting.
The first caveat is to remember that patients might not be savvy about the journalistic process. You can assume a politician knows that talking to a reporter means they are likely to be quoted. Patients need a reminder that you are taking notes and/or recording your conversation and that they should tell you if there are some details they would rather not share publicly.
You might need to make accommodations for your source’s medical condition, as well. For example, someone dealing with chronic fatigue might need to be interviewed in short conversations over several days. A person with cognitive impairment might need more explanation about what you’re writing — and having a caregiver present during the interview could be helpful.
Even though it can feel intrusive to ask sensitive questions, Lunch and Learn freelancers agreed that patients are often motivated to share their stories because they hope to help someone else in a similar situation.
So, how can you find a good interview subject? Here are a few strategies:
- Contact doctors or the communications officer of a local hospital. If you are interviewing a medical expert about recent research or a new treatment, make it clear at the outset that you will need to talk to a patient. With the patient’s permission, the doctor also may be able to share information from the medical record to add important details to the patient’s story.
- Reach out to patient advocacy groups. These exist for rare diseases as well as common ones, such as the American Diabetes Association. Be aware that some advocacy groups may provide media training for their patient-spokespeople, and they may have talking points that are aligned with their advocacy agenda (some advocacy groups also receive significant funding from pharmaceutical companies). That’s not necessarily disqualifying — you just might need to redirect them to talk about the issues that are relevant to your story.
- Attend events organized by advocacy groups. If it works with your deadline, you can get more spontaneous sources at an event, such as a walk to raise money for Alzheimer’s or breast cancer research.
- Search Facebook for patient-focused groups and contact the site administrator. Facebook groups provide support for patients with a wide variety of conditions. While they often are closed to public view, the administrator may allow you access or might be willing to post your request for someone to interview.
- Post on your own Facebook or LinkedIn. You might find a friend who knows someone, or a friend of a friend who meets your needs.
- Post a query on an online patient forum. Some patient organizations have online communities. These are typically closed groups, but you may be able to request access or permission to query the users.
- Ask for sources from HARO (Help A Reporter Out) or Qwoted. Both sites link reporters with PR professionals, and they aren’t health care-specific — but they might be able to connect you with sources.
In addition, you can find a tip sheet with more advice on the Pitching, Reporting and Writing page of the AHCJ freelance center.
