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.
Arielle Zionts (Photo courtesy of Kaiser Family Foundation)
Soon after Arielle Zionts, a rural health reporter for Kaiser Health News, read a press release about telehealth services for sexual assault survivors living in the rural U.S, she was inspired to pursue a story about it. Her article, published in January 2023, also addresses the shortage of sexual assault nurse examiners, also known as SANEs, in those parts of the country.
In this “How I Did It”, Zionts explains how she found the sources for her story, some of the challenges she faced in her reporting and shares story ideas.
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.
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.
The Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge in Chattanooga, Tenn. (Photo courtesy of Margarita Martín-Hidalgo Birnbaum)
Americans living in rural areas are less likely to use telehealth services than urban residents. The reasons are not unique to them: they may have concerns about giving private information over the internet or don’t know how to find their way around technology. But slow internet speed and reliability problems appear to most affect access to telehealth services in those communities.
That suggests that people in those parts of the United States may not be getting access to quality health care in part because “if you are getting spotty access, you’re not going to have a real consult,” Sinsi Hernández-Cancio, J.D, a vice president at the National Partnership for Women & Families. Hernández-Cancio said the demand for those telehealth services during the coronavirus pandemic underscored the need to upgrade older telecommunications infrastructure in less dense areas of the United States and exposed technological shortcomings in telehealth and user barriers to it.
The state of internet services infrastructure was among the equity measures that health care experts discussed in “The truth about telemedicine: promise and limitations,” a panel at Rural Health Workshop 2022 in Chattanooga, Tenn. The daylong event held on July 14, 2022, included sessions about finding trend data on rural areas and efforts to recruit people to the nursing profession to serve less populated areas of the country.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
Kerry Dooley Young is an independent journalist and AHCJ's core topic leader on patient safety. Joseph Burns, a Massachusetts-based independent journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform.
Amid issuing some of the most significant rulings this century, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) also decided on two cases where certain hospitals challenged federal decisions that cost them money.
Hospitals scored one win and one loss in these cases. Both cases involved Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS) policies created under Republican presidents that the Biden administration sought to defend.
In Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation, the Supreme Court split 5-4 in a June 24 decision about a calculation used to decide which hospitals qualify for extra pay for serving many people with low incomes. The Supreme Court found in favor of HHS in this case, disappointing hospital groups.
On June 15 in the American Hospital Association (AHA) v. Becerra case, the Court said in a unanimous decision that HHS erred in the administrative procedures in cutting reimbursement on certain drugs. In this case, the Biden administration had defended a Trump administration bid to compel hospitals to share certain savings they get on medicines with Medicare and people enrolled in the program.
Kerry Dooley Young is an independent journalist and AHCJ's core topic leader on patient safety. Joseph Burns, a Massachusetts-based independent journalist, is AHCJ’s topic leader on health reform.
Melba Newsome is a veteran freelance journalist with more than 20 years’ experience. Her health and science features have appeared in Health Affairs, Oprah, Prevention, Scientific American, Chemical & Engineering News and North Carolina Health News.
Rural health care facilities must employ enough professionals to meet the needs of their communities. But maintaining the health care workforce is a problem that goes back a long way. Their professionals need adequate education and training, cultural competency skills, and hold appropriate licensure or certification.
Medical residents who train in cities tend to stay in cities. Some rural providers say that closing the rural-urban physician gap is a matter of luring some residents away from these population centers.
Melba Newsome is a veteran freelance journalist with more than 20 years’ experience. Her health and science features have appeared in Health Affairs, Oprah, Prevention, Scientific American, Chemical & Engineering News and North Carolina Health News.
