The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation today announced that eleven medical journalists from across the nation have been selected for the 2012 class of the Health Coverage Fellowship.
The 2012 participants include Lisa Chedekel of the Connecticut Health Investigative Team, Erika Cohen of Business NH Magazine, Chelsea Conaboy of the Boston Globe, Lisa Eckelbecker of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Margaret Evans of WBUR-Radio in Boston, Jackie Farwell of the Bangor Daily News, Shefali Kulkarni of Kaiser Health News, William Mills of the Cape Cod Times, Chris Rauber of the San Francisco Business Times, Lena Sun of the Washington Post, and Steven Syre of the Boston Globe.
The fellowship is designed to help the media improve its coverage of critical health care issues. It does that by bringing in as speakers more than 50 top health officials, practitioners, researchers, and patients. It also brings the fellows out to watch first-hand how the system works, from walking the streets at night with mental health case workers to riding in a Medflight helicopter or spending a morning in a crowded emergency room.
The program, which is entering its eleventh year, is sponsored by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, with support from the Blue Shield of California Foundation, Kaiser Family Foundation, Maine Health Access Foundation, Connecticut Health Foundation, and New Hampshire’s Endowment for Health.
The fellowship will run for nine days, beginning April 27. It is housed at Babson College’s Center for Executive Education in Wellesley, and is operated in collaboration with leading journalism organizations. Larry Tye, who covered health and environmental issues at the Boston Globe for 15 years, directs the program. A former Nieman Fellow and author of six books, Tye has taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, Tufts, and Harvard.
The fellowship will focus on a series of pressing medical issues – from implementing health care reform to curbing costs, addressing mental illness, and redressing public health threats. Attention also will be given to breakthroughs in medical treatments and innovations in the delivery of care.
The teaching will not end when fellows head back to their stations or papers. Tye, the program director, will be on call for the journalists for the full year following their nine days in Wellesley. He will help when they are stuck for ideas or whom to call on a story. He will assist in thinking out projects and carving out clearer definitions of beats. He also maintains a web site where fellows will post their stories and keep in touch.