How to cover health disparities and COVID-19

May 13, 2 p.m. ET

Long-standing racial disparities and gaps in access to health care services are having an impact on communities across the country in different ways during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Data has begun to emerge that the virus is having a disproportionate affect, in terms of illness and death, on vulnerable populations and minority communities. How can and should reporters be shining a light on this aspect of the outbreak?

Obesity physician and scientist Fatima Cody Stanford, M.D., and two investigative journalists, Matthew Kauffman and Dawn Fallik, will offer you tips and ideas on how to use data and how to write about this topic.

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There will be time for Q&A during this webcast and you can submit your questions ahead of time.

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• Dawn Fallik, professor and investigative journalist, University of Delaware

• Matthew Kauffman, investigative reporter, Solutions Journalism Network

• Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, MPA, FAAP, FACP, FAHA, FTOS, Obesity Medicine, Health Policy, Health Disparities, Health Broadcast and Print Media, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital

• Moderator: Bara Vaida, AHCJ core topic leader/infectious diseases

Fatima Cody Stanford is an obesity medicine physician scientist and media professional who specializes in the care of adults, adolescents, and children with overweight and obesity. After completing her fellowship in obesity medicine & nutrition at MGH and HMS and a Zuckerman fellowship as a mid-career Master of Public Administration student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2015, she joined the faculty where she provides clinical care, supervises trainees, administers a clinic, and conducts research on obesity, health policy, and health disparities to enhance our knowledge and quality of patient care.

Matthew Kauffman is an investigative journalist and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is part of the Solutions Journalism Network, an independent, nonprofit organization that advocates an approach of solutions journalism, an evidence-based mode of reporting on the responses to social problems. As manager of SJN’s Positive Deviance Data Project, he oversaw the development of a database to illustrate the racial impact of COVID-19 on communities. Kauffman also teaches data journalism at Central Connecticut State University. Prior to SJN, he was a reporter for several decades at The Hartford Courant. There he specialized in computer-assisted reporting and edited his blog, The Scoop, which covered investigative and data-driven journalism.

Dawn Fallik teaches beginning and advanced reporting classes at the University of Delaware’s department of English and is an investigative reporter. Previously, she was a medical reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, co-director of the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting and an Associated Press reporter in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Omaha. She freelances on medical issues for publications such as Science News, where she recently wrote about the social determinants of health and COVID-19.