Menlo Park, CA – The Kaiser Family Foundation today announced the nine journalists selected to participate in this year’s Kaiser Media Fellowships in Health program.  The Kaiser Media Fellows will engage in group site visits focused on health policy issues and attend special briefings with leading health policy experts and practitioners to increase their understanding of current health policy issues, while working on in-depth reporting projects on a variety of policy-related topics.  The Fellows will also receive training in multimedia reporting techniques.

The 2008 Kaiser Media Fellows will undertake the following projects:

• Aliyah Baruchin, freelance health contributor, The New York Times and other news outlets, New York, NY
  Racial and ethnic disparities in health care
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• Steve Bogira, freelance journalist and author, Chicago, IL
  The impact of poverty and race on health, and the disparity in health care, reflected in two adjacent city neighborhoods
  
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• Greg Branch, freelance journalist, former Managing Editor, BET News, New York, NY
  Recruitment of medical personnel from Africa and Asia and its impact on the developing world and on U.S. medical policies
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• Karen Brown, health reporter/producer, WFCR-FM Radio, Western New England
  An in-depth look at Massachusetts health reform in action– what's working, what's not, and what other states can learn
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• Karen Houppert, freelance reporter and author; special correspondent, The Washington Post Magazine, Baltimore, MD
  The state of drug treatment in the U.S., and the human and financial costs of current drug treatment policies
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• Naseem Sowti Miller, health reporter, The Ocala Star-Banner, FL
  The quality of medical care in jail and prisons, and the broader impact on public health and health care
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• Jeremy Olson, medical reporter, St. Paul Pioneer Press, MN
  An exploration of the long-term care crisis and the social, financial and political solutions
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• Renata Simone, independent documentary film producer and reporter, Boston, MA
  The rise of medical tourism, access and affordability of health insurance, and the globalization of health care
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• Robert Winn, independent documentary film producer, New York, NY
  The unintended impact of anti-immigrant policies on other disadvantaged communities
  

"With news organizations under increasing pressure to cut costs, our Fellowship program is an opportunity for journalists to get hands-on experience with health policy issues through site visits and briefings, and to spend concentrated time on projects designed to explain complex health policy issues," said Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Kaiser Media Fellowships in Health program, established in 1993, provides journalists with flexibility to pursue in-depth research projects combined with newsroom reporting while participating in group site visits and briefings on a variety of health policy issues.  In March 2008, the Fellows spent a week in northern California for a series of briefings on such topics as the state’s health reform initiative and San Francisco’s Health Access Program.  They also participated in site visits at the corporate headquarters of Safeway and Google to learn about the private sector’s role in health reform and how using information technology can improve the quality of health care respectively.  The 2008 Fellows will meet for an intensive three-day workshop on multimedia reporting, including blogging and audio-visual reporting, and in November, the Fellows will convene at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, for a three-day program on spreadsheet reporting and multimedia techniques and technologies.

The fellowship projects can take as long as nine months or as little as a few months to complete, but all fellows participate in site visits and seminars throughout the year.  Stipends are awarded based on the length of the fellowship, up to $55,000 for a nine-month period.  The program also covers expenses, such as travel and computer equipment, based on the needs of the project.

Fellows are selected by a national advisory committee, which reviews fellowship applications and interviews finalists.  The Kaiser Media Fellowship Program National Advisory Committee members are:

• Paul Delaney, director, Initiative on Racial Mythology, Washington, D.C.
• Timothy Johnson, M.D., medical editor, ABC News
• Bill Kovach, chairman, Committee of Concerned Journalists
• Laurie McGinley, deputy bureau chief, Global Economics Bureau, The Wall Street Journal
• Joanne Silberner, health policy correspondent, National Public Radio
  

Ninety-nine Kaiser Fellows have been selected since Kaiser began its journalism program in 1993.  The journalists have represented some of the leading print, radio and television news organizations in the nation.  A complete list of Kaiser Fellows and other program details are available online.