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This year’s version of the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowships is going virtual.
In past years, AHCJ and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have invited health journalists for in-person sessions on the CDC campus in Atlanta under a fellowship program. This year, to keep colleagues safe, the sessions will be held virtually. But much of the experience will be the same. Continue reading
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided AHCJ with the email addresses and phone numbers of three key media officers, a move that a top official said she hoped would foster “a better working relationship” with reporters.
Michelle E. Bonds, director of the Division of Public Affairs at the CDC, provided the contact information after AHCJ’s Right to Know Committee described members’ difficulties getting answers from the CDC. Continue reading
CDC/ Sarah Bailey Cutchin
As sexually transmitted diseases, like chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, have surged 31 percent over the past five years, states are relying more than ever on disease detectives to halt that spread.
These detectives are called “disease intervention specialists.” They are trained to track down and counsel people who have been diagnosed with STDs and anyone they have had intimate contact with. The aim is to ensure everyone is tested and treated, preventing anyone else from getting the STD. Continue reading
Documents obtained after a long FOIA battle reveal “behind-the-scenes maneuvers and long-standing connections between the scientists’ group and government officials” in the debate over whether Lyme disease can be chronic.
The debate, and the fight for the documents, are detailed by Mary Beth Pfeiffer in the Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal and by documentary film maker Kris Newby on IRE’s Transparency Watch blog.
In 2007, in doing research for a film, Newby requested emails and resumes pertaining to three employees at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. She writes that “For five years the agency strung me along with frivolous denials, mysterious delays, shifting explanations and false promises. In essence, the delays became an illegal, off-the-books FOIA denial.” Her account of how the CDC handled – or didn’t handle – her request is alarming.
Newby, whose film had been completed, provided the 3,000 pages of documents to Pfeiffer.
The documents show close connections between the government officials who set disease policy and researchers who have received government funds and written treatment guidelines. “As a result, physicians and scientists with opposing views on Lyme disease believe they have been marginalized in the debate.” This graphic provides a good overview of the connections and issues.
Fourteen journalists, sponsored by AHCJ, are wrapping up a two-day workshop at the CDC about covering influenza. The workshop included a series of on-the-record sessions with CDC experts to prepare front-line journalists for the upcoming flu season. Public health experts are providing a primer on the flu, examine how it is being tracked, expectations for vaccines and antivirals, and what communities can do to deal with the fallout.
Speakers included CDC Director Thomas Frieden and Anne Schuchat, M.D., director, National Center for Immunization & Respiratory Diseases, as well as a number of other experts.
The AHCJ-sponsored journalists are:
Some of the journalists have already written about the seminar and they all will take what they learned this week home to help them report on influenza for their local readers and viewers.
