Tag Archives: global

Health is on the agenda at UN Week

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Liz Seegert

About Liz Seegert

Liz Seegert (@lseegert), is AHCJ’s topic editor on aging. Her work has appeared in NextAvenue.com, Journal of Active Aging, Cancer Today, Kaiser Health News, the Connecticut Health I-Team and other outlets. She is a senior fellow at the Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement at George Washington University and co-produces the HealthCetera podcast.

Photo: United NationsTijjani Muhammad-Bande, president of the seventy-fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly, speaks at the high-level meeting on universal health coverage.

Welcome to UN Week in New York City … when savvy residents know better than to venture anywhere near the east side, avoid driving (or cabbing) below 50th Street and that the quickest way to get anywhere is by subway or on foot. Gridlock disaster doesn’t begin to describe it.

It’s a time when global leaders come together to talk about mutually important issues, like climate change (check out Greta Thunberg’s speech), trade, war and peace and world health.

A high-level meeting on universal health coverage, “Universal Health Coverage: Moving Together to Build a Healthier World,” brought together heads of state, political and health leaders, policymakers and universal health coverage champions on Monday to advocate for health for all. Continue reading →

UN, medical journal highlight oral care as a global public health challenge

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Mary Otto

About Mary Otto

Mary Otto, a Washington, D.C.-based freelancer, is AHCJ's topic leader on oral health and the author of "Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America." She can be reached at mary@healthjournalism.org.

Photo: World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr

Painful and debilitating oral diseases such as tooth decay, gum disease and oral cancers are estimated to impact more than 3.5 billion people across the globe. Yet nations have almost universally failed to grapple with this health crisis, an international team of experts has concluded.

In the first article in a two-part series, led by researchers at the University College London and published by The Lancet, members of the team explore the extent of the epidemic, which burdens nearly half the world’s population. Continue reading →

Advice from a journalist covering global health

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Bara Vaida

About Bara Vaida

Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in outlets that include the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico and The Washington Post.

Photo: Dan Blah via Flickr

Amy Maxmen, a San-Francisco-based science reporter for Nature magazine, travels the world to cover global health topics. In 2018, her work took her to Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand to cover the rising number of malaria deaths in Southeast Asia.

Her story “Malaria’s Ticking Time Bomb,” won first place in AHCJ’s 2018 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism for a public health story published in the small market category. The article deftly blended plain English with scientific jargon to tell the story of scientists and public health workers efforts to eliminate malaria in Southeast Asia, as they contend with volatile political situations. Continue reading →

Persistence, persuasion pays off with critical global health security story

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Bara Vaida

About Bara Vaida

Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in outlets that include the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico and The Washington Post.

Photo: M M via FlickrLive poultry market in Xining, China.

Ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China are having an impact on the global economy and potentially U.S. biosecurity.

Late in the summer of 2018, New York Times reporter Emily Baumgaertner authored a story breaking the news that China had stopped providing samples of a flu virus – named H7N9 – with U.S. health authorities. The H7N9 bird flu [the influenza virus is named with H’s and N’s based on their protein makeup] has been circulating in China since 2013 and has spread through poultry farms. Continue reading →

New fellowship program compares international health systems

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Pia Christensen

About Pia Christensen

Pia Christensen (@AHCJ_Pia) is the managing editor/online services for AHCJ. She manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org, coordinates AHCJ's social media efforts and edits and manages production of association guides, programs and newsletters.

The Association of Health Care Journalists has announced a new pilot fellowship program to help veteran U.S.-based journalists compare elements of the U.S. health system with those of other countries. The AHCJ International Health Study Fellowships, supported by The Commonwealth Fund, provides for training as well as international field reporting assistance.

The program for mid-career journalists is intended to give print, broadcast and online reporters an opportunity to study how one element of the U.S. health care system is handled in another country and to report on the differences. Fellows will be able to interview patients, health care providers and policymakers both in the United States and abroad.

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Newly merged infectious disease organization offers journalists’ resources

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Bara Vaida

About Bara Vaida

Bara Vaida (@barav) is AHCJ's core topic leader on infectious diseases. An independent journalist, she has written extensively about health policy and infectious diseases. Her work has appeared in outlets that include the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico and The Washington Post.

Photo: CDCAedes aegypti

More than five million children around the world die before the age of five from infectious diseases like pneumonia, malaria and measles, and scientist John Aitchison wants to talk to journalists about his work to reverse that trend.

“We can help journalists with the significance or size of an issue and provide understanding of why a disease is hard to cure or treat,” says Aitchison, whose organization, the Center for Infectious Disease Research (CIDR) announced plans in July 2018 to merge with the Seattle Children’s Research Institute. Continue reading →