The Association of Health Care Journalists is requesting funding from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research's Small Grant Program for Conference Support to help support the Association's second national conference which will take place in the spring of 2001 in Atlanta, Ga. The conference is part of the Association's mission to improve public understanding of health and health care issues by promoting the highest standards of journalism. By supporting this conference, the Agency can put its research into practice and educate journalists. The goal of the conference is to create more sophisticated and discerning journalists. In turn, that can lead to a more sophisticated and discerning public. After all, many journalists don't have a clue about how to report on complex health are issues when they start on the beat. They need to be educated before they can educate that public. And, even veteran journalists who specialize in these areas find keeping up with the latest information, synthesizing information and interpreting its significance is often difficult. Specifically, the conference would aims to: 1) to improve journalists' skill in reporting, writing and editing complicated health and health care stories; 2) to let journalists hear first-hand from some key policy makers and researchers and 3) ideas, skills and knowledge about how to better report, write and edit health care stories. The conference would be held during a three-day period, starting with a Thursday morning press conference, followed by tours of the Centers for Disease Control and a evening reception and dinner. The conference would continue Friday and end Saturday afternoon. Approximately 15 speakers would be brought in for a series of plenary sessions on such topics as health care quality, access to care, the state of medical research, health care report and the reliability of medical information on the internet, among other things. In addition, about 10 journalists would teach workshops aimed at developing journalists' skills in such as interpreting statistics, reading 990 forms, understanding hospital balance sheets and determining the newsworthiness of medical research. An estimated 200 to 250 print and broadcast journalists would be expected to attend. Strong outreach efforts would be made to attract journalists of color and young journalists who are interested in covering health care. By bringing together a significant number of journalists from small-, medium- and large newspapers, local TV stations, trade publications, and magazines, the Association can improve their skills, enhance their knowledge and create a network that these journalists can turn to for support and help.
