Program Highlights:
The four-day weekend will kick off with a keynote presentation Thursday with Richard Jackson, M.D., M.Ph., professor and chair of the Environmental Health Sciences Department at the UCLA School of Public Health. Professor Jackson is the host of a four-hour public health TV series, Designing Healthy Communities, which is appearing on PBS stations nationally this month. A former high-ranking official at the Centers for Disease Control and director of public health for California, he will talk about how the built environment affects health.
On Friday morning, we will hear from Erika Fowler Franklin, Ph.D., an expert in media content analysis of broadcast health journalism at Wesleyan University, on "Getting a Grip on Statistics: What's Right and Wrong with Numbers in the News."
A second Friday morning session will feature a panel discussion on park access and community open space, featuring award-winning Cal Endow Fellow and award-winning investigative journalist Tracy Wood's series on unequal access to parks in Orange County and Robert Garcia, executive editor of The City Project.
Field Trip: The Los Angeles River: A City's Beginnings and its Futur: The Los Angeles River, a 51-mile long swath of concrete and gravel that cuts across Los Angeles County. The river is in the process of being transformed into a community asset that provides open space and recreation opportunities.
On Saturday morning, we will hear from Beate Ritz, a leading environmental health researcher, about her pioneering studies on connections between Parkinson's Disease and pesticide exposure. She also has studied correlations between pre-term birth and air pollution. She will share a panel with Joy Horowitz, a Health Journalism Fellow and author, who recently wrote about water quality, pesticide exposure and Parkinson's Alley in the Central Valley. Joy will share tales of her reporting adventures and tips from her time investigating this story as a solo freelancer taking on an ambitious project.
Also on Saturday, we will host a panel on "Housing and Community Health: California's Foreclosure Crisis," featuring Dr. Sanjay Basu , UCSF physician andEpiAnalysis blogger and Ngoc Nguyen, environmental health editor for New America Media.
On Sunday morning, the program will feature an interactive workshop on "Reporting Health News with Context and Balance" led by Robert Davis, Ph.D. M.P.H., author of ‘Coffee is Good for You: From Vitamin C and Organic Foods to Low-Carb and Detox Diets, the Truth about Diet and Nutrition Claims."
You willl also hear Sunday from social media guru Staci Baird of Stanford University, who will discuss how social media can be used to foster community engagement.
Session 1: Nov. 17-20, 2011
Dr. Anthony Iton, senior vice president for healthy communities at The California Endowment and one of the country's foremost thinkers on the topic, will speak on "Health Disparities: How Inequality Influences Our Health and Our Lives."(Here's what award-winning investigative reporter Dave Davis has to say about Dr. Iton)
In a keynote dinner address, award-winning investigative reporter Michael J. Berens of the Seattle Times will talk about how he reported his six-part series, "Seniors for Sale: Exploiting the Aged and Frail in Washington's Adult Family Homes," which won both the Gerald Loeb Award and the Worth Bingham Prize in 2010.
Suzanne Bohan, science writer for Bay Area News Group, and Sandy Kleffman, health reporter for the Contra Costa Times, will talk about how they reported the story, "Shortened Lives," which won a national award in 2010 from the White House Correspondents Association.
In a keynote luncheon address, Dr. Rishi Manchanda, founder of Rx Democracy! and former social medicine director of St. John's Well Child and Family Centers, will talk about rethinking how medicine is practiced, with a focus on treating causes, not symptoms: "Where Health Begins: Revolutionizing Community Health Care."
A panel discussion on "Obama's Health Reform: The California Problem," featuring Brietta Clark, Professor of Law, Loyola Law School; Noam Levey, Washington Correspondent, Los Angeles Times; and Drs. Marcia Sablan and Oscar M. Sablan, co-founders of Sablan Medical Clinic in the Central Valley.
Charles Ornstein, a senior reporter at ProPublica, will provide reporting tips gleaned from a career that has produced a Public Service Pulitzer Prize and a nomination as finalist for a second Pulitzer, in a talk, "Telling Patient Stories: Promise and Pitfalls."