Investigations into flawed or corrupt health-care practices won many of the top honors in the Association of Health Care Journalists’ 2019 contest, for which results were announced today.
The Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism drew 454 entries, up 29% from the previous year, partly because of a surge in student-journalist entries.
This was the second year for the contest’s student category, designed to encourage and highlight work by young journalists.
Photo: Sam Owens, Charleston Gazette-MailEric Eyre’s investigative series, Painkiller Profiteers, chronicled massive pain pill shipments to West Virginia. This shows the cremated ashes of a West Virginia woman who died from a drug overdose.
Lack of work, educational gaps, despair, overprescribing – there’s a host of reasons behind the nation’s opioid crisis. It may seem daunting to reporters who want to nail down the epidemic’s causes, but sometimes you just have to keep digging – literally.
West Virginia reporter Eric Eyre realized something was off when, during a trip to the state pharmacy board, he began digging through boxes filled with faxes from drug wholesalers reporting suspicious pharmacy activity. Continue reading
Eric Eyre
In two days in December, the Charleston Gazette-Mail published two blockbuster articles about the opioid crisis in West Virginia, the results of months of reporting by Eric Eyre, the paper’s statehouse reporter.
Anyone who read them would recognize that Eyre’s work was outstanding, if only for the numbers he included in each piece. Over six years, the nation’s largest drug distributors shipped 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills to pharmacies in the state, he reported. In that same period, 1,728 West Virginians fatally overdosed on those two painkillers, he wrote. Drug distributors shipped enough hydrocodone and oxycodone for each of the state’s 1.8 million residents to have 433 pills. Continue reading
In-depth investigations into heroin and pain-pill abuse drew several top awards in this year’s Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.
The 2016 awards, announced today by the Association of Health Care Journalists, recognize the best health reporting in 11 categories. This year, the contest’s 13th, drew nearly 400 entries.
Winning entries included investigations into inflated prescription-drug prices, agricultural practices fueling antibiotic resistance, and poor oversight of dangerous drug interactions.
Hundreds of people with disabilities sent to group homes against their will, troubles in nursing homes, and an examination of infant mortality rates that rival those in some Third World countries were among the stories winning top honors in this year’s Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.
Also winning awards were pieces that found inconsistent standards for home care in Ontario, injuries sidelining nurses across the United States and a radio feature that followed a young man with a failing liver.
The 2015 awards, announced today by the Association of Health Care Journalists, recognize the best health reporting in 11 categories.
See the list of winners and links to their work. AHCJ members can click through to see the questionnaire about how the story was reported.
Because of technical difficulties, AHCJ will accept entries for the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism until noon ET on Jan. 7, according to contest coordinator Brandi McGrath.
The annual awards program, which is run by journalists and not influenced or funded by commercial or special-interest groups, recognizes the best health reporting in print, broadcast and online media. Continue reading