Dr. Jerome Adams
COLUMBIA — Dr. Jerome Adams who served under President Donald J. Trump from September 2017 until January 2021 as the 20th Surgeon General of the United States, will speak at the Association of Health Care Journalists’ annual conference in St. Louis in March.
Adams’ “fireside chat” at noon Friday at the Union Station Hotel will focus on “What COVID can teach us about our nation’s health, and ourselves,” moderated by AHCJ Executive Director Kelsey Ryan.
Tracy Kidder (courtesy of author)
COLUMBIA — Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder and Boston physician Jim O’Connell, the subject of Kidder’s new book, will keynote the Association of Health Care Journalists’ annual conference on March 9 in St. Louis.
Kidder chronicled the life of global health pioneer Paul Farmer in the 2003 bestseller “Mountains Beyond Mountains.” He won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 1982 for “The Soul of a New Machine.” He has written more than 10 books.
In a turn of event we could not have possibly predicted, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has displaced the Kiev-based, full stack web developer who took over the data component of AHCJ’s hospital finances website late last year.
Although Roman Kolgushev, his wife, Olga, and child are safely relocated somewhere in Ukraine, hospitalfinances.org, which AHCJ members have used to search 990s filed by non-profit hospitals for many years, is out of commission.
While we knew AHCJ needed to hire someone to develop a new API (an application programming interface) and had done so — that’s Roman — we did not know the site’s access to its data resource was ending last week or that the IRS would stop updating its data at the end of last year. Roman is in no position to solve this problem from his safe location in Ukraine.
The result is that there will be a pause in the availability of this helpful data until we can stand up a new site. Meanwhile, we’re looking into why the IRS hasn’t updated its data.
We’ve already begun talking to a new provider and hope to have a solution very soon.
Meanwhile, we hope you have Ukraine in your thoughts.
Melba Newsome
Melba Newsome is the new AHCJ core topic leader for health equity. A veteran freelance journalist from Charlotte, N.C., she has more than 20 years’ experience reporting on news and general interest topics.
Over the past year, she has reported extensively on COVID-19 in the Black community, funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. In the past decade, her work has focused primarily on education and health, with a concentration on disparities and rural health.
Her health and science features have appeared in Health Affairs, Oprah, Prevention, Scientific American, Chemical & Engineering News and North Carolina Health News. Continue reading