Tag Archives: infectious disease

Ask the experts: What do you want to know about COVID-19?

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webcastThe COVID-19 pandemic is quickly evolving and finding up-to-date answers to questions from experts has been challenging for many journalists.

On Friday, March 27, join two experts from Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who will be answering your questions about what is known about the virus, how the health system is responding, how the outbreak might end and strategies for journalists to combat misinformation.

To ensure that we address your questions, you are invited to submit them ahead of time using this form. Continue reading →

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.

Vaida to lead newest AHCJ core topic effort: infectious diseases

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Bara Vaida

Bara Vaida, an independent journalist based in Washington, D.C., will lead AHCJ’s newest core topic on infectious diseases.

She will be guiding AHCJ members to the resources they need to cover the many aspects of covering infectious diseases through blog posts, tip sheets, articles and other material. The core topic area of healthjournalism.org will feature a glossary, a more lengthy explanation of key concepts, shared wisdom from other reporters, story ideas and more. 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.

Coverage of Zika continues as researchers, reporters learn more

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Photo: CDC/ Prof. Frank Hadley Collins, Dir., Cntr. for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, Univ. of Notre Dame

Photo: CDC/Prof. Frank Hadley Collins, Dir., Cntr. for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, Univ. of Notre Dame

Zika has been in the news since the beginning of the year in the United States, but health officials and journalists are still working to understand and explain the virus.

I collected some relevant resources for reporters on Jan. 28 (updated on Jan. 29) and many of those sites have been updated with the latest information.

Here is some notable coverage as well as resources that have emerged since then: 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.

Doctor says media coverage of Ebola ‘fanned the hysteria’ #ahcj15

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Kris Hickman/AHCJDeane Marchbien, U.S. president of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, critiqued media coverage of Ebola.

Kris Hickman/AHCJDeane Marchbien, U.S. president of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, critiqued media coverage of Ebola.

Media coverage of the Ebola epidemic did a disservice to the public and, “a reckoning is due,” a Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders leader told health care journalists gathered in Silicon Valley last month.

“Instead of focusing on the medical literature and the facts related to Ebola, many of your colleagues fanned the hysteria and the frenzy and the fear,” Deane Marchbein, M.D., told journalists gathered for Health Journalism 2015, the Association of Health Care Journalists’ annual conference, in Santa Clara, Calif.

“An opportunity to educate, inform and reassure was, to a great degree, missed.”

Ebola dominated the headlines only when an American became infected, said Marchbein, who is president of the U.S. Board of Directors for MSF/Doctors Without Borders and was the keynote lunchtime speaker. Continue reading →

Stephanie Innes is a senior reporter covering health at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. She attended Health Journalism 2016 as one of five health system fellows through the Commonwealth Fund. In 2016 she was named journalist of the year by the Arizona Newspaper Association.

Choose words carefully when writing about Ebola

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Phot by NIAID via Flickr

Image by NIAID via Flickr

Word choice matters, especially when it comes to covering a deadly disease.

You may have heard the terms “infectious” and “contagious” being used interchangeably in Ebola stories. Even health professionals sometimes use them that way, and that is adequate in many instances. However, minor differences between the two terms may play a role in which one you decide to use in a story.

According to the CDC, contagious means the bacteria or virus can be transmitted from person to person (a communicable disease), and is quantified by R-nought – a mathematical construct that predicts the number of people a contagious individual will infect. Continue reading →

Kris Hickman (@the_index_case) is a graduate research assistant for AHCJ, pursuing a master’s degree in public health. She has a bachelor's degree in anthropology, with a minor in journalism, from the University of Missouri. She spent two years in Zambia as an HIV/AIDS community education volunteer in the Peace Corps. She aspires to be an epidemiologist and science writer.