Health care reporting includes both:
- Medical news involving hospitals, doctors, nurses, new approaches to health care, costs of health care, and so on;
- Public health, which includes pandemic control, restaurant inspections, water quality, sewage systems and other public health issues.
Professional training resources in health care news coverage
- Poynter Institute health care briefings
- Poynter Institute on Coronavirus coverage
- Association of Health Care Journalists
- What I wish I’d known when I started (Open Notebook)
- National Association of Science Writers
- American Medical Writers Association
Regional stories and resources
New River region public health district general web site is a portal to background information for the region.
There is also a site for news releases that has only secondary links from the top, so it’s not easy to find.
Health departments are often seen as slow to react and very soft spoken, but that’s not the case when something serious happens. Here’s a story about a daycare center in Radford that refused to take coronavirus seriously, and in fact, spread false information demonizing the use of masks. The story is interesting for students because it contains VDH documents and inspection reports.
New River health statistics include high rates of injury and heart disease, along with high rates of childhood poverty.
New River region food and restaurant inspection reports and lists of restaurants in the area. There are also restaurant reports from other areas of the state.
Air pollution from Radford Army Ammunition Plant has been a longstanding controversy in the region. Here’s one of the latest stories on the open burning of toxic wastes. While RAAP plans to “reduce” the burning, it is notable that similar plants in Wisconsin and Louisiana have already stopped the practice.
Water pollution — VDH has a shared responsibility with the Dept. of Environmental Quality for some areas of water pollution. Both were very critical of the way contamination in the New River, especially by PCBs, was treated by local governments. Yet both state agencies tend to be constrained by state politics. For VDH reports on environmental quality, see this Environmental Health site or this page of other VDH reports.
DEQ has a list of impaired waters, including this list for the NRV published in 2020.