So far, it’s looking as if our upcoming Health Journalism 2019 conference in Baltimore May 2-5 is going to be one of our largest and busiest info-packed gatherings ever.
As the event grows nearer, here’s a handy checklist to help independent journalists, in particular, get ready.
Before the conference, you’ll want to go to our online freelance directory to: Continue reading
The Association of Health Care Journalists and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health announced they will collaborate this year to present the first Fellowships on Women’s Health.
The program will allow a small group of journalists to spend several days in Washington, D.C., focused on increasing their understanding of and ability to report more deeply on health issues that are often unique to women or require a different approach.
“We are happy to get a chance to work with the Office on Women’s Health on this new program,” said Len Bruzzese, AHCJ’s executive director. “Along with a chance to dive into these important topics, our fellows will be exposed to reliable sources they can call upon later, develop skills for tapping into trustworthy source material when doing their own research and come away with lots of story ideas worth pursuing.”
Photo: kerolic via Flickr
Like many reporters, I have developed several niches in my reporting within medical research. I most often write about pediatrics, women’s health, mental health, vaccines, public health (including gun violence) and, increasingly, health disparities or related social justice aspects of health and medicine.
Because I try to include links throughout my writing to back up the figures I use to provide context on a topic, I would frequently find myself looking up the same data again and again. For topics like vaccines, it usually wasn’t too difficult to find studies or statistics I had previously cited. They were generally easy to find on the CDC website, or I could remember a couple key articles I’d written where I linked to the majority of the figures I might want to link to again. Continue reading
Photo: Matt Hintsa via Flickr
One challenge when covering medical conferences is that, depending on your publication’s needs, you often must conduct many interviews on the fly both with presenters and with attendees at the sessions.
Since many other people also are vying for the presenters’ attention, you might only be able to get in a few short questions after a session. Continue reading
The Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, the educational arm of the Association of Health Care Journalists, has been awarded a grant of more than half a million dollars to strengthen the knowledge and skills of health care journalists.
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation made the three-year grant of $509,400 to the Missouri-based center to assist in educating journalists in building their knowledge base in several areas.
Along with continuing the foundation’s support of a web-based core curriculum on health information technology, the grant will support a new curriculum on patient safety, curated resources for freelance journalists and an endowing sponsorship of the annual conference of AHCJ.
Two top freelancers at Health Journalism 2018 – Linda Marsa and Heather Boerner – and attorney Ruth Carter offered a series of great tips to help you start thinking of your freelance work as a real business … and make it pay like one.
Marsa kicked off the session, “Unleash your inner entrepreneur,” with advice about getting a good mix of work, and getting paid for it: Continue reading