The USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism offers resources & partnerships for journalists, policy thinkers & clinicians advancing health in the US.
https://linktr.ee/ReportingOnHealth The Center for Health Journalism is an online community for people passionate about fostering great health and medical coverage of our communities. The Center for Health Journalism spurs conversations about health journalism, blogging and storytelling. It provides its members with a place to swap ideas, to showcase their work and to benefit from our reporting to
https://linktr.ee/ReportingOnHealth The Center for Health Journalism is an online community for people passionate about fostering great health and medical coverage of our communities. The Center for Health Journalism spurs conversations about health journalism, blogging and storytelling. It provides its members with a place to swap ideas, to showcase their work and to benefit from our reporting to
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Our National Fellows get up to $10,000 in grant funding, attend a one-week training institute and receive six months of professional mentorship as they pursue groundbreaking health journalism.
Apply today:
https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/event/2022-national-fellowship
Poor literacy rates are such a strong predictor of incarceration that the director of one youth justice clinic that offers legal services for juveniles in North Carolina said the first thing she does when she meets a new client is read them their police records. “I just read it to them because I do not think that they can read it. Well over half of them really struggle,” she told Thompson
https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2022/03/21/reading-through-the-lines-the-correlation-between-literacy-and-incarceration/
Juvenile justice advocates see a disproportionate number of children with reading disabilities, which the pandemic shed a light on.
School-based complaints that sent students to the juvenile justice system decreased during the pandemic in North Carolina. Now that kids are returning to class, juvenile justice officials are gearing up for a spike in complaints.
http://ow.ly/T6il50IoKL9
School-based juvenile justice system complaints decreased when children were not in school during the pandemic, but what about now?
With kids learning at home during the pandemic, school-based juvenile justice complaints fell to about 30 percent from the previous year in North Carolina. One expert said the move to at-home learning allowed students to escape the justice system.
http://ow.ly/h9Zi50IoGMX
When schools shut down at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, juvenile delinquency complaints decreased. Here’s what it means — and what it doesn’t.
Despite at least 21 states introducing legislation related to covering costs of doula care in 2021, Oklahoma lawmakers had yet to act. National Fellow Kassie McClung highlighted successful programs that paired doulas with Black families to drive down increasing maternal mortality rates.
http://ow.ly/Onnn50IoIU9
The state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.
The federal government initially told Kevin White that the lien on his family home would total $187,000 to cover the cost of his mother's Medicaid care before she passed. When the housing market boomed months later, they doubled the amount.
http://ow.ly/QNSf50ImVGG
Kyeland Jackson has the first in a three-part series on a little-known Medicaid policy.
South Fresno was once a thriving Black neighborhood. It was segmented by redlining and freeway development and now faces one of the worst rates of pollution in the nation. Warehouse development is worsening the situation, Monica Vaughan reports.
http://ow.ly/Y06s50In7LZ
The boom of local truck traffic is adding to the environmental burdens South Fresno residents are already facing.
Just 3% of Washington residents have long-term care insurance, despite there being 70% of residents over 65 who will need long-term care in the future. Washington policymakers think they have a solution with WA Cares, the nation’s first public insurance program for long-term care. https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/2022/03/21/long-term-care-insurance-market-disaster-can-washington-state-offer-better-path-forward
The private market has failed to deliver affordable long-term care insurance. Washington state has another plan.
Richmond County School District was struggling with chronic absenteeism before the pandemic. After COVID, a record number of students have gone missing, Data Fellow Liz Owens reports.
http://ow.ly/SVEe50IngpE
After nearly two years of losses from lives and jobs to homes and education, high school students are vanishing from the classrooms in record numbers.
Policymakers interviewed by Fresnoland reporters suggested that proceeds from a sales tax measure for transportation infrastructure should be used to spur economic growth. Solving safety and transportation access issues for vulnerable communities? “Not so much,” writes California Fellow Danielle Bergstrom. http://ow.ly/eLbE50In7Ua
Why journalists interested in accountability reporting on investments related to health and neighborhoods should start with local tax measures.
At least 12,000 American families struggling to find treatment for their children with mental illness make the desperate decision to relinquish custody to the state so they receive the care they deserve. Data Fellow William Wan tells the story of just one in haunting detail.
http://ow.ly/Oieu50InfmW
After struggling to get treatment for her mentally ill son, a mother’s act of desperation: giving up custody.
Domestic violence isn’t just a crime story — it’s a public health crisis. The children who stand witness to it perhaps have the most to lose.
Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Anne Saker offers her nine tips for journalists covering domestic violence in their communities.
http://ow.ly/V9jQ50ImWyQ
In April 2020, early in the pandemic, six women in Cincinnati were murdered, more than in all of 2019. In at least half of the instances, domestic violence lay at the root.
Once a thriving Black neighborhood, South Fresno was segmented by a history of redlining and freeway development. Even as its residents are overburdened with some of the worst environmental pollution in the nation, local leaders continue to greenlight construction of warehouses that bring more trucks — and smog — to the region. http://ow.ly/yuk450In7Be
The boom of local truck traffic is adding to the environmental burdens South Fresno residents are already facing.
Virginia state leaders allowed their public health department to wither and shrink for more than two decades. During the pandemic, it was Latino and Black communities who suffered. National Fellow Sabrina Moreno reports.
https://richmond.com/news/local/essential-and-overlooked-how-decades-of-inaction-failed-virginias-latinos-during-covid/article_e7094fde-2f72-58e4-b037-9347d768b5ed.html
A five-month investigation by The Richmond Times-Dispatch sheds light on how Virginia's health infrastructure was allowed to wither for two decades, with grave consequences once COVID struck.
POC are less likely to receive newly-developed COVID therapeutics , despite the disproportionate toll the disease has taken on them. Join pediatrician Dr. Aaron Carroll, Miami Herald reporter Daniel Chang and Dr. Annie F. Luetkemeyer for a discussion about unequal treatments.
REGISTER FOR FREE: https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/content/covering-coronavirus-unequal-access-covid-treatments
"Racism is a public health crisis."
Didn't catch our talk last week with equity scholar Brian Smedley? Watch the full recording here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QXyRP0whHs&t=3s
Ripping kids away from parents, siblings, homes and schools is traumatic. Any time spent in the foster care system leads to long-term health impacts. In LA, social workers break up Black and Native American families at disproportionately high rates.
http://ow.ly/Cbzl50I8upL
The county's child welfare statistics offer a bleak picture of the current situation.
In the next phase of the pandemic, facts will become our new vaccine
Learning how to live with COVID is a huge challenge. But there’s more to consider in weighing our comfort levels than just the virus.
'We know it’s broken. It’s broken to pieces.' At one Georgia elementary school, 1 in 10 students are homeless. When the pandemic struck, almost 900 didn't turn up to class and were classified as "missing" by district officials. Fellow Liz Owens investigates. https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/2022/01/08/pandemic-s-homeless-students-have-been-left-languish-georgia
The pandemic hit students like an earthquake. It's even worse for students in one failing school district in Georgia.
As COVID-19 infections rise across the United States, health officials, politicians and pundits have suggested that the disease becoming endemic would return the nation to a sense of normalcy. But for millions of Americans who are immunocompromised or otherwise at higher risk, “normal” isn’t possible, Chinyere Amobi reports.
http://ow.ly/1Kx150HW5Gl
The chronically ill, individuals living with disability, and those who care about them are increasingly speaking out.
"Looking at the health care system through the lens of a sickle cell disease patient is a litmus test for how equitable the system is, for a simple reason: nearly all sickle cell disease patients are Black or of African descent." Via Farah Yousry. https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/2022/01/28/sickle-cell-disease-patients-navigate-legacy-systemic-racism
Nearly all sickle cell disease patients are Black or of African descent. What can their care tell us about disparities in our health care system?
One domestic violence worker called transnational abandonment “one of the most sinister and damaging forms of abuse” they had witnessed. That practice, where vulnerable immigrant women are abandoned in their countries of origins by their husbands, spiked during the pandemic. http://ow.ly/pJx450HUPMR
Transnational abandonment spiked significantly during the pandemic. Two journalists reflect on their effort to share survivor's stories and advocate on their behalf.
For Navajo people during the pandemic, a history of colonialism, exploitation, environment injustice, and political neglect manifested in illness rather than health. Impact grantee Eli Cahan explores how health systems failed them. https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/2022/02/03/untangling-how-past-met-present-indigenous-communities-during-covid-19
The health care system in Navajo territory received less attention during COVID than other factors. A new investigation will take a fresh look at the breakdowns.
The CDC and a growing body of governments are declaring racism a public health crisis. It operates through laws, policies, and systems that help create and maintain Black disadvantage. Join us for a discussion with equity scholar Brian Smedley on how racism operates in health care systems.
REGISTER
http://ow.ly/Uowq50HTgLL
5,000 visits.
114 overdoses reversed.
Those are the early stats from the nation's first two government-authorized centers that opened in November where people can safely use illegal drugs. Its given harm reduction advocates hope.
http://ow.ly/l28m50HRfof
New York City bets on this controversial model. More communities may soon follow.
"In college I dreamed of creating something called the Raw Style. This week that style was let out into the world. It took so many people to make this happen. They trusted and coached me, and I feel like the distance between squares and stoners in the shadows grew a little less distant," National Fellow Donnell Alexander writes.
https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/2022/01/28/what-i-learned-tracking-down-story-racial-inequities-cannabis-world
Before I even knew the broader perimeters of my series, I knew that I wanted to give voice to the people who were not free to tell their stories.
In Milwaukee, a chronic disease is sweeping the city’s children from predominately Black and poor neighborhoods into emergency rooms at alarming rates.
The disease is asthma and doctors say it’s one of the most preventable reasons for pediatric emergency room visits, Impact Grantee Talis Shelbourne reports.
http://ow.ly/20V250HOMn9
The problem has solutions, so what's keeping the city from embracing them?
Accessing public records during the pandemic is vital. Learn tips and strategies for your next request from #FOIA pros Gunita Singh of Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press and Derek Kravitz of MuckRock and the Documenting COVID-19 Project at Brown Institute for Media Innovation.
REGISTER: https://usc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_nJ9l__kNRgGZE6kOrj9N9g
In many cases, hysterectomies are unnecessary and invasive. Despite that, Black women receive them at rates 3x higher than whites.That disparity deepens in the South. Impact grantee Amy Kingsley explores the issue.
https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/2022/01/28/why-do-black-women-get-more-hysterectomies-south
Some studies show that Black women receive hysterectomies at three times the rate of whites. The consequences of the procedure can be huge.
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