Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism

As the nation’s media outlets face shrinking budgets and shoestring staffing, resources for journalists’ continuing education and professional development are limited.

Increasingly, reporters are assigned to multiple beats rather than to one specific area, so their knowledge of any one are may be relatively superficial. The Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, the supporting 501(c)(3) organization for the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), aims to fill that knowledge gap through an annual four-day national conference to attract approximately 500 journalists and health care luminaries and cover a wide range of issues, both content-focused (e.g., covering various aspects of the Federal health reform law, health care disparities, issues in aging and long-term care) and skills-focused (e.g., understanding how to read medical studies or interpret hospital quality data).

This NYHealth funding provided fellowships to 15–20 journalists in New York State to cover registration, lodging, and a travel stipend for AHCJ’s 2014 national conference, as well as one-year AHCJ membership. Funds also supported AHCJ staff time for fellowship promotion and coordination, and marketing, design, and administrative expenses.