Author Tracy Kidder and physician to the homeless Jim O’Connell to keynote HJ23

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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.

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Reed is director of education and content and a longtime member of AHCJ. She was a professor of practice in the Missouri School of Journalism for 17 years and an editor at the Columbia Missourian. She designed and taught a course on covering trauma and a course for STEM field and journalism students on improving science communication.

A niche mental health newsroom eyes expansion   

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Mind Site News website screenshot

MindSiteNews.org is the nation’s only news organization exclusively covering mental health.

Launched in September 2021, it’s an outgrowth of a smaller, state-focused website at California’s Steinberg Institute that veteran health and mental health journalist and AHCJ award-winner Rob Waters was running at the time.

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Katti Gray (@kattigray) is AHCJ's core topic leader for behavioral and mental health. A former Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Journalism Fellow, Gray is providing resources to help AHCJ members expand their coverage of mental health amid ongoing efforts to de-stigmatize mental illness and to place mental health care on par with all health care.

Why race equity plans matter and how to report on them

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Photo via Canva

Dallas is among cities, counties and other local governments that have recently adopted race equity plans. In the 2022-2023 goals and metrics report, city officials have said they want to track their goals, which include tracking air quality in certain areas and upgrading water and sewer lines in neighborhoods that haven’t seen investment for decades. There’s a line in there about improving the health of the city’s Black and Hispanic residents, who represent more than 60% of the population of the country’s ninth-largest city and are more likely than their white peers to have preventable chronic diseases. 

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Margarita Birnbaum (@mbirnbaumnews) is AHCJ's Health Equity Core Topic Leader. An independent journalist who has covered health disparities. Birnbaum’s stories have been published by WebMD, American Heart Association News, and American Indian, the magazine of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Applications open for Health Journalism 2023 fellowships

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With the support of AHCJ’s generous funders, financial assistance will be available to a limited number of journalists who wish to attend Health Journalism 2023 in St. Louis March 9-12, 2023. 

Typically, conference fellowships are place-based and open to full-time print, broadcast and online journalists, as well as part-timers or freelancers who derive the majority of their income from journalism. If selected for a fellowship, fellows may be asked to write an AHCJ story post and/or take some photos or shoot video during a conference session.

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NPR journalist offers storytelling tips from her caregiving podcast

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Kitty Eisele

When longtime NPR journalist Kitty Eisele became a full-time caregiver for her dad, she found herself unprepared for the medical, legal and emotional challenges of elder care. So, she did what any good journalist would do. She started reporting. Eisele created the Twenty-Four Seven podcast, now in its third season, which explores living, dying and what our loved ones mean to us.

In this “How I did It,” you’ll learn more about Eisele’s storytelling process for her podcast. This conversation with has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist and AHCJ’s topic leader on aging. She covers older adults, baby boomers, health policy, and social determinants of health, as well as many other health issues. Her bylines include stories for PBS/NextAvenue.org. the American Journal of Nursing, TIME Health, Medscape, Consumer Reports, and Medical Economics, as well as dozens of other trade and mainstream media. Her articles have been syndicated in Forbes.com, the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant, the Saturday Evening Post and other major outlets.