The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation today announced that thirteen medical journalists from across the nation have been selected for the 2022 class of the Health Coverage Fellowship.
The 2022 fellows are Anjuman Ali of the Washington Post, Caitlin Andrews of the Bangor Daily News, Hadley Barndollar of the USA Today Network, Isabella Cueto of STAT News, Erika Edwards of NBC News, Gabrielle Emanuel of WBUR Radio in Boston, Karen Brooks Harper of the Texas Tribune, Pien Huang of NPR, Lesley McClurg of KQED Radio in San Francisco, Andrea Petersen of the Wall Street Journal, Emily Alpert Reyes of the Los Angeles Times, Amanda Sealy of CNN, and Isabelle Taft of Mississippi Today.
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 75 health officials, practitioners, researchers, and patients. It also brings the journalists out to watch first-hand how the system works, from walking the streets at night with mental health case workers to visiting the world’s biggest brain bank.
The program, which is entering its twenty-first year, is sponsored by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, with support from the Blue Shield of California Foundation, Bower Foundation in Mississippi, Endowment for Health in New Hampshire, Fledgling Fund, Maine Health Access Foundation, National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and, in Texas, the Episcopal Health Foundation, Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, Methodist Healthcare Ministries, and St. David’s Foundation.
The fellowship will run for nine days, beginning September 16, 2022. It is housed at Babson College’s Center for Executive Education in Wellesley, MA. 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 eight books, Tye has taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, Tufts, and Harvard.
Next fall’s fellowship will focus on a series of pressing issues – from preventing future pandemics to treating mental illness, rooting out racial and ethnic inequalities, redressing homelessness, and rethinking later-life care. Attention also will be given to breakthroughs in medical treatments and curbing health-care costs.
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 also will assist in thinking out projects and carving out clearer definitions of beats.
About the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation
The mission of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation is to ensure equitable access to health care for all those in the Commonwealth who are economically, racially, culturally or socially marginalized. The Foundation was established in 2001 with an initial endowment from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. It operates separately from the company and is governed by its own Board of Directors. More information on the foundation is available at www.bluecrossmafoundation.org, and on the Health Coverage Fellowship at www.bluecrossmafoundation.org/programs/health-coverage-fellowship.
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