About

Covering Health is a blog maintained by the Association of Health Care Journalists. It is intended to help keep journalists who report on health and health care issues informed about the latest news in the field, aware of noteworthy stories and reports, and able to connect with colleagues.

The Association of Health Care Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing public understanding of health care issues. Its mission is to improve the quality, accuracy and visibility of health care reporting, writing and editing. There are more than 1,000 members of AHCJ.

Along with its 501(c)3 educational arm - The Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism - AHCJ offers training opportunities, fellowships, publications, tip sheets, articles and web resources for reporters covering all aspects of health care journalism, including medical research, public policy, consumer health, health law, clinical health, public health, ethics and the business of health care. Be sure to see the wide range of resources available on our website for reporters who cover health and medicine.

Staff

Covering Health is produced by a group of contributing editors/moderators:

Andrew Van Dam, web writer, AHCJ
Van Dam earned his master’s degree from the Missouri School of Journalism, where he studied reporting, both through text and through new media, infographics and design. He previously reported for the Idaho Press-Tribune in Nampa, Idaho.

Pia Christensen, (@AHCJ_Pia), managing editor/online services, AHCJ
Christensen manages the content and development of healthjournalism.org. She assists with the editing and production of AHCJ’s publications, including books, conference programs and the quarterly newsletter. She previously was publications coordinator for Investigative Reporters and Editors, where she oversaw website content, edited IRE publications and assisted advertisers. She worked as a copy editor and an interactive producer at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a producer for Tribune Interactive, a sports copy editor for the Marin (Calif.) Independent Journal, and was job and internship coordinator at the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism in San Francisco. She telecommutes from Oklahoma.

Judith Graham (@judith_graham), AHCJ topic leader on aging
Graham is building new resources for journalists covering aging and will provide resources to help AHCJ members cover the complexities of aging by writing blog posts, tip sheets, articles and other resources.
Graham started writing about health care finance and policy in the mid-1980s. She has reported on Medicare, Medicaid, long-term care, chronic care, patient safety, public health, efforts to improve health care quality, end of life care, and the business of health care, among other topics. She wrote a monthly column on aging for the Tribune Co. newspapers, which was distributed widely across the country. Also, she has hosted more than half a dozen hour-long Web chats on aging issues and wrote extensively about those topics on her blog, Triage, and in the news pages of the Chicago Tribune, where she worked for 14 years.

Joanne Kenen, (@joannekenen) AHCJ health reform topic leader
Kenen is a Washington-based writer who specializes in health and health policy. She is leading an effort to provide resources to help AHCJ members cover the complexities of implementing health care reform. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, The Washington Post, Slate, the Washingtonian, Kaiser Health News, Health Affairs, Miller-McCune, the American Prospect, AARP Magazine and numerous other publications. She was the senior writer for the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation, and a Kaiser Media Fellow in a 2006-7 , where she wrote extensively about palliative medicine, hospice, and aging. A longtime Reuters correspondent in New York, Florida/the Caribbean, and Washington, she has covered everything from voodoo festivals to U.S. presidential campaigns and she spent more than a decade covering health policy on Capitol Hill. Thanks to her particularly wakeful second son, she is co-author of a parenting book, “The Sleeplady’s Good Night, Sleep Tight.” Earlier in her career, she did a lot of reporting from Latin America, and co-authored a book on Costa Rica.

Jeff Porter, special projects director, AHCJ
Porter became AHCJ special projects director in 2008 after serving six years as the database library director for Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. In that position, he conducted and directed data analysis for broadcast and print investigative projects, served as lead instructor for computer-assisted reporting boot camps, and provided journalism training across the United States and overseas. He also has served as a CAR instructor at the Missouri School of Journalism. Previously, he worked 20 years as an award-winning newspaper journalist, served as adjunct college faculty, and co-created and hosted a weekly radio program. His last newspaper job was at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where he served as CAR specialist, combining traditional investigative reporting techniques with advanced data analysis tools.

Len Bruzzese, executive director, AHCJ
Bruzzese is the executive director of AHCJ and its Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. He is also an associate professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and serves on the executive committee of the Council of National Journalism Organizations. Bruzzese, a founding staff member of USA Today, spent 20 years in daily journalism before entering the nonprofit and academic worlds. He served as deputy director of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting for seven years before helping base AHCJ at Missouri in 2005. He is co-author of “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook,” (fourth edition), and has edited 11 reporter beat books focused on different reporting topics of use to daily journalists. He has won several newspaper and magazine editing awards and was named Outstanding Alumnus in Journalism by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Bruzzese’s journalism career included writing, editing and management stints at USA Today, The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), the Pensacola News Journal and Gannett News Service (Washington, D.C.). His final daily newspaper position was as editor of The Olympian in Olympia, Wash.

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