Young to report on health for USA Today
AHCJ member Alison Young has gone from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she has been writing an investigative column, to USA Today, Matt Dornic reports on MediaBistro.com. 
Young, who previously covered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will cover health on the paper’s national desk.
Young also is president of the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ board of directors.
CDC refuses to hand over 4,000 pages to paper
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public records
In January, 2007, AHCJ member and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Alison Young asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 4,000 pages of documents, all discussing the threats to the agency’s reputation posed by her work and that of her co-workers.
Photo by Marcin Wichary via Flickr
The CDC says it takes an average of 38 days to process Freedom of Information Act requests, yet the Atlanta paper has several requests still pending after a year or two. In a recent column, Young takes the tardy agency to task, citing President Obama’s request for openness.
In the AJC’s case, the CDC said it fears publishing the records “would interfere with the agency’s deliberative process and have a chilling effect on employee discussions.” The records are being withheld under an FOIA exemption for internal documents that are part of the agency’s deliberative process.
Report spurs Atlanta vaccination reform
ACHJ member and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Alison Young followed up her initial report on unvaccinated students in Atlanta schools with a story about the school districts’ resulting crackdown. Young also questioned some schools’ claims of 100 percent compliance, based on changes in the way schools counted students without required booster shots.
According to Young, the worst-offending school districts had taken significant measures to become compliant with local vaccination requirements. One district even kicked 105 students out of class on Jan. 30 for noncompliance.
A few area schools have not yet vaccinated all students, Young found. She said that a work group recently began meeting to assign roles and responsibilities for enforcing the law.
Young even discovered an internal Atlanta school district email urging vaccination compliance because of the possibility of follow-up stories in the media.
“The ‘perception in the state is that Fulton County and Atlanta have the worst immunization rates and are nonresponsive to blatant notification of violations or media scrutiny and the media is ready to write a follow-up story documenting this fact,’” a district official wrote.
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