Tag Archives: How I Did It

Investigative journalist wins Pulitzer
for Mississippi series on Medicaid fraud

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Reporter Anna Wolfe

Investigative journalist Anna Wolfe. Photo courtesy of Anna Wolfe

Investigative journalist Anna Wolfe has a secret. 

During a multi-year investigation into a sprawling scandal over misspent welfare funds in Mississippi, Wolfe received dozens of text messages that helped to blow the lid off the case. Since getting those messages last year, the award-winning reporter has protected her source’s anonymity. But in an interview with AHCJ, she promised to reveal the name someday — when the time is right. 

On May 8, Wolfe won a Pulitzer Prize in the local news category for Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news organization founded in 2016, for her coverage of what’s called the biggest public corruption scandal in the state’s history.

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Joseph Burns (@jburns18), an independent journalist who resides in Brewster, Massachusetts, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform. He welcomes questions and suggestions and tip sheets at joseph@healthjournalism.org.

How journalists found that some telehealth startups share patient information with social media trackers

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From left to right: Katie Palmer of STAT, Todd Feathers and Simon Fondrie-Teitler of The Markup

In September 2022, I wrote about how journalists with The Markup found that many hospital websites were sharing patients’ medical information with Facebook through a tracking tool called the Meta Pixel. Then in December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that entities covered by HIPAA can’t use pixel trackers if they transmit protected health information without patient consent or if they don’t have a signed agreement with the technology-tracking vendors, Becker’s Health IT reported.

In a follow-up story published in December, The Markup/STAT investigative team found that websites run by dozens of telehealth startup companies also contained tracking tools that shared users’ potentially sensitive health information with big tech organizations.

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Karen Blum is AHCJ’s core topic leader on health IT. An independent journalist in the Baltimore area, she has written health IT stories for publications such as Pharmacy Practice News, Clinical Oncology News, Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News, General Surgery News and Infectious Disease Special Edition.

Lessons learned from reporting on sex trafficking survivor stories

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Sandy West

When reporter Sandy West took on an assignment to cover a Texas program that offers comprehensive mental and physical health services to survivors of sex trafficking who identify as men, she quickly delved into a topic she didn’t know much about. In a recent interview, West, an independent reporter based in Houston, talked about how she prepared for the story and things reporters should keep in mind when talking to people who share memories of difficult experiences. Her story was published in September in The Imprint.

This discussion has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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Margarita Martín-Hidalgo 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.

How to use health equity data to cover access to COVID‑19 rapid tests

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Victoria Knight

When the Biden Administration rolled out two COVID-19 rapid tests programs in mid-January, Kaiser Health News reporters Victoria Knight and Hannah Recht were separately researching the initiatives, including one that allowed Americans to get free tests through the U.S. Postal Service. Their reporting included interviewing experts and gathering U.S. Census Bureau data about health equity measures such as home-based internet subscription rates. 

The behind-the-scenes reporting illustrates how some stories are rooted in social media serendipity and collaboration. In this “How I Did It,” Knight and Recht explain how the article came together and why the data they compiled suggested that millions of Americans — mainly Black, Hispanic and Native American, and Alaska Native people — could face significant challenges in getting the rapid tests. (The following conversation was edited for clarity and brevity.)

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Margarita Martín-Hidalgo 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.

Award-winning journalist explains how to build meaningful connections with sources

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Emily Woodruff

Emily Woodruff, a health care reporter for the New Orleans Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, was recognized as one of the winners of AHCJ’s 2021 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism in the beat reporting and health policy (small) categories at Health Journalism 2022.

Her winning local COVID-19 coverage offered a vivid picture of how Louisiana’s hospitals, health care providers and residents were coping with the ongoing pandemic and other events impacting health in communities, such as hurricanes, the opioid epidemic and other diseases. In many of her articles, Woodruff provided readers with a sense of connection to people featured in her stories. 

In this “How I did It,” Woodruff shares her process for building trust with sources and enlivening her stories. 

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

How do you create captivating scenes in your articles? What are your top tips?

You can probably tell in the stories when I was there with someone as an interaction unfolded or when I got to meet someone in their environment. I think that helps a lot. During COVID, we weren’t able to do a lot of that, and it’s something I missed. I think health care reporters in general, have to spend more time interviewing someone for any given story. Often [health reporters] are interviewing people who aren’t used to talking to the media. For a lot of these stories, you have to spend some time [with them]. You have to indicate that you understand where they’re coming from. So, a lot of times that looks like just being informed about whatever issue it is that they’re facing.

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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 the National Journal, Agence France-Presse, Bloomberg News, McClatchy News Service, MSNBC, NPR, Politico, The Washington Post and other outlets.