Insights

In 2010, a nurse at Napa State Hospital walked back to her ward after dinner, following the same path she’d taken hundreds of times before. But this time, she ran into a patient who should never have been allowed to roam the hospital grounds unsupervised.

This week, we announce the 11 Fellows who join us for our new California Data Fellowship, which will provide intensive mentoring on adding data reporting to journalists' toolkits.

Clavo and a few friends were driving from a Del Paso Heights chicken restaurant to a football game at their Sacramento high school, where Clavo, a cornerback, was expected to stride onto the field with his usual swagger. He stopped at a light and gunshots erupted. He would never arrive.

On August 27, 2015, sheriffs at the Santa Clara County Main Jail found a 31-year-old inmate with a history of mental illness dead in his cell. His body was covered in feces and vomit. The medical examiner concluded that the man, Michael Tyree, died of internal bleeding from blunt force trauma.

Fresno County, home to nearly a million people, has some of the highest STD rates in California. The problem is urgent, but it's not an easy story to report. KVPR's Diana Aguilera tells how she was able to gain access to the communities most impacted by STD outbreaks.

The digital revolution has been a boon to reporting. But turning paper into digital files is not the same as making them freely available online, and major obstacles persist. The National Practitioner Data Bank offers a particularly egregious example.

As physicians, we can find evidence in the research literature to support or discourage almost anything. If we don't have a coherent approach to care, it's quite difficult to decide when we have sufficient evidence to change our practice.

WNYC, the nation’s premier public radio station, is hiring a health desk associate producer and a temporary health reporter. Check out these and other job, fellowship and award opportunities in this week's roundup.

The rising prevalence of "narrow" health insurance networks has set off alarms. But do such networks keep patients from getting good care? Not necessarily. The more relevant question is whether a provider network is adequate or not.