The Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) is requesting funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Small Grant Program for Conference Support to help fund AHCJ's Fourth National Conference. The conference is part of AHCJ's mission to improve public understanding of health and health care issues by educating and training journalists who cover health and health care. Slated for March 15-18 in San Francisco, this conference will no doubt help fulfill the Agency's mission to enhance the quality, appropriateness, and effectiveness of health services, and access to such services by strengthening the knowledge and skills of journalists who communicate health and health care information to the public. All signs point to an outstanding conference. Indeed, the 2003 conference should be of particular interest to the Agency because we'll continue to focus on quality of care issues and evidence-based medicine. This conference will also give us another opportunity to acquaint journalists with AHRQ's Consumer Assessment of Health Plans (CAHPS), the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), Evidence-based Practice Centers (EPCs), U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and the National Guideline Clearinghouse. And, during this conference we will acquaint journalists with issues and problems in the delivery of health services and will summarize research findings on improving the outcomes, quality, access, cost and use of these services. We believe the 2003 conference fits perfectly with the Agency's interest in supporting improvements in health outcomes, strengthening quality measurement and improvement and identifying strategies to improve access, foster appropriate use, and reduce unnecessary expenditures. Other workshops that we plan to offer also support the Agency's goals by strengthening journalists' knowledge and skills. For example, we'll offer an All-Day Boot Camp for journalists new to the beat, possibly repeat the highly successful workshop on GIS-mapping at this year's conference and some special session specifically for broadcast journalists on how to better report thorny health issues. In short, we believe this conference will be an excellent opportunity for the Agency to put its research into practice and educate journalists. In addition, the conference will allow attendees to hear firsthand from key policymakers and researchers, encourage cross-fertilization of ideas of journalists from various specialized and general interest news outlets and strengthen their commitment to covering health and health care issues. To extend our research beyond the conference, ACHJ also hopes to create a CD-ROM of the conference proceedings and mail to every member who is unable to attend. All of the conference materials and presentations also will be posted on our Web site and include articles about conference sessions in a post-conference edition of our newsletter, HealthBeat.
