Tag Archives: health

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.

Veteran reporter offers tips to keep yourself safe covering wildfires

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Photo: Lance Cheung/USDA via Flickr

So you’re working away — perhaps at home — on a story about vaping or high prescription costs or results from a new clinical trial, not paying much attention to the news. All of a sudden your editor calls to tell you that winds have stoked a grass fire that’s now raging and headed your way. Your editor wants you to jump on it. All the other reporters are out covering other blazes or emergencies.

But you’re a health reporter, not a fire reporter! What do you know about covering this stuff? And oh, by the way, an hour later, you learn you’re going to have to evacuate your family and precious belongings from your own home as well. Continue reading →

Cheryl Clark (@CherClarHealth) is a MedPage Today contributor and inewsource.org investigative journalist. For most of 27 years, she covered medicine and science for the San Diego Union-Tribune. After taking a buyout in 2008, she became senior quality editor for HealthLeaders Media.

Top health reporting of 2018 recognized in Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism

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Reporting that exposed faulty, careless or crooked practices won many top honors in this year’s Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.

The 2018 winners were announced today by the Association of Health Care Journalists. The contest, now in its 15th year, drew more than 350 entries in 12 categories.

The association’s board added a new student category to the contest this year, to recognize the work of journalists training to cover health care.

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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.

Lack of awareness of Valley fever is the disease’s biggest danger

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Photo by Tristan Ettleman/Cronkite News“Time is lost and the patient gets worse,” Valley fever patient Jim Meenaghan said of physicians’ unfamiliarity with the disease.

PHOENIX — Doctors can misdiagnose Valley fever, a fungal disease that lurks behind common symptoms like coughs and fatigue, because many aren’t familiar with the respiratory disease, medical experts said. And that could prolong patient suffering.

Misdiagnoses not only hinder Valley fever recovery, they can make it worse, said John Galgiani, director of the Valley Fever Center for Excellence in Tucson. Galgiani is speaking about the dangers of the respiratory disease on Sunday at the Association of Health Care Journalists conference, Health Journalism 2018, in Phoenix. Continue reading →

Tristan Ettleman, a Cronkite News digital reporter on the futures beat, covers the intersection of technology and society. His portfolio includes a story on the revolution of block chain, the tech behind cryptocurrency, in the medical field and other industries.

Get support to pursue major health reporting project

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Health journalists have a rare chance to get support for work on an in-depth reporting project related to the U.S. health care system.

The AHCJ Reporting Fellowships on Health Care Performance offer financial support as well as training and personalized guidance from experienced journalists as they delve into subjects that affect local and national health outcomes.

Past projects have included: Continue reading →

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.