2012 National Health Journalism Fellowship, Dennis A. Hunt Health Journalism Fund, The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health Journalism Fund

Application deadline: April 16, 2012

Who Can Apply:
This all-expenses-paid Fellowship is open to professional journalists from print, broadcast, and online media around the country, including freelancers. Applicants do not need to be full-time health reporters, but should have a demonstrated interest in health issues, broadly defined to include the health of communities (see more below). Applications from ethnic media journalists are strongly encouraged. Applicants proposing collaborative projects between mainstream and ethnic news outlets are given preference. Applicants must be based in the United States. Journalism students are ineligible. Please contact us at CAHealth@usc.edu if you have questions about your eligibility.
Event Schedule:
July 22, 2012
The National Health Journalism Fellowships program offers journalists an opportunity to explore the intersection between community health, health policy, and the nation’s growing diversity. Reporting projects are supported with a $2,000 grant to each Fellowship recipient. The program pays all travel and hotel costs.
http://www.reportingonhealth.org/fellowships/how-to-apply

Charles Orenstein of Pro Publica is taling about ”Telling Patient Stories: Promise and Pitfalls” at California Endowment Journalism Fellowship.

I’m also doing some tweeting at the fellowship @chuleenan. #chjf

Here’s some information about the project I’m working on. To read the entire post, please go to http://www.reportingonhealth.org/blogs/2011/11/18/abortion-and-law-california-2

California has the strongest legal protections for abortion in the nation. There are no waiting periods, parental notification requirements, or restrictions on publicly funded abortions, unlike many other states. As a result, California has earned a reputation as a ”pro-choice” state.

But having the legal right to an abortion does not necessarily mean a woman has access to an abortion – even if there are more than 500 abortion providers in California. According to a 2010 report by the NARAL Pro-Choice California Foundation, ”41 percent of California counties do not have an abortion provider, while 91 percent have at least one CPC [crisis pregnancy center].” (Nationally, the Guttmacher Institute says, in 2008 87 percent of U.S. counties had no abortion provider.)

CPCs seem like legitimate women’s health clinics, but their goal is to persuade women to continue their pregnancies and prevent abortions. They typically do not offer abortions or abortion referrals. NARAL claims that there are more than 200 CPCs in California.

”Part of the challenge in California is that [CPCs] act like clinics but they are not actually clinics,” says Parker Dockray, executive director of the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom. Dockray says CPCs in California are very sophisticated and some of them are actually licensed clinics with medical staff so it can be very difficult to figure out that they are not really medical clinics. …

I’m at the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowship in Los Angeles. Today is Day 3 of the program. The first day began with dinner and a keynote talk by Michael Berens, the award-winning investigative reporter from the Seattle Times. He spoke about ”Seniors for Sale,” the series he did on adult family homes.

Yesterday was jam-packed with talks and discussions, including
- a very informative presentation ”Health Disparities: How Inequality Influences Our Health Our Lives,” by Anthony Iton, senior vice president, Healthy Communities, The California Endowment;
- A talk by Suzanne Bohan, science writer at Bay Area News Group and Sandy Kleffman, health reporter at Contra Costa Times, who spoke about their fellowship project ”Shortened Lives: The Backstory,” which was published in the Contra Costa Times;
and a lunch keynote by Rishi Manchanda, founder of Rx Democracy! who spoke about his work on ”Where Health Begins: Revolutionzing Community Health Care.”