New York, July 13, 2015 – The Center for Health, Media & Policy (CHMP) at Hunter College, City University of New York, has been awarded a grant from Johnson & Johnson for a new Healthcare Workforce Media Fellowship.
The purpose of the fellowship is to improve journalists’ coverage of healthcare workforce issues, with particular attention to the factors that affect existing and new roles of nurses and other health care providers as the nation focuses on improving people’s experiences with care, improving health, and reducing health care costs.
The Healthcare Workforce Fellowship will train an emerging journalist on key aspects of health reporting on healthcare and nursing workforce issues. The Fellow will investigate and report on a relevant topic of his or her choice for eight months, including cross-platform reporting.
“We are thrilled to offer this first training and mentoring program that encompasses the role of nurses and other health care workers in the current and future health care system,” said Diana J. Mason, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, Co-Director of the Center and Rudin Professor of Nursing at Hunter College, City University of New York. According to Mason, who is president of the American Academy of Nursing, nursing workforce issues receive little media attention beyond superficial coverage of nurse practitioners as physician substitutes.
Health Journalist Liz Seegert, CHMP Senior Fellow and co-producer of HealthStyles on WBAI-FM (Pacifica), NY, has been named Director of the program. She will guide the Fellow in publishing multi-media, print, and broadcast reports, including appropriate use of nurses as sources in health care reporting. “I look forward to mentoring a new generation of health reporters to improve coverage of these increasingly-important issues,” Seegert said.
“Nurses are overwhelmingly voted the most trusted profession every year, yet the nursing role is not fully understood, nor is their full potential always realized,” said Andrea Higham, director of the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future . “The role of nurses will become even more pronounced in the coming years as demands on our healthcare system increase exponentially and the expected shortage of nurses in the U.S. continues to increase. The Healthcare Workforce Media Fellowship provides a unique and important opportunity to help initiate and socialize further conversation in the broader media landscape about the important role of nurses and highlight the impact they have on our healthcare system, in our communities and on patients and their families.”
New America Media, the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 3,000 ethnic news organizations, will partner with the Center to distribute the Fellow’s work to a national and international audience.
The Fellow will be selected from a pool of post-graduate and early career health journalist applicants in August and will begin work with CHMP on September 15, 2015.
The Center for Health, Media and Policy (CHMP) is an interdisciplinary initiative for advancing the health of the public and healthy public policies. CHMP is a catalyst for shaping crucial conversations about health and health care through media, research, education, and public forums. This media fellowship is an extension of the Center’s mission, designed to increase awareness and encourage debate of critical health and policy issues. The Center was co-founded and is co-directed by Barbara Glickstein, MS, MPH, RN, and Diana Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN, producers of the radio program, Healthstyles, for 30 years.
Launched in 2002, the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future is a multi-year, $50 million national initiative, designed to enhance the image of the nursing profession, recruit new nurses and nurse faculty, and help retain nurses currently in the profession. Working in cooperation with various professional nursing organizations, schools, hospitals, other healthcare groups and providers, the Campaign focuses on promoting opportunities within nursing, as well as increasing awareness of the value of the nursing profession to our overall society and healthcare community. While still maintaining its original framework, the Campaign has evolved over the years to include an additional focus on solving new issues such as the need for better access to healthcare, desire to expand the quantity and quality of the nursing workforce, and the need for more capacity within nursing schools. For more information on the Johnson & Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future, visit.www.discovernursing.com.
For more information, contact Liz Seegert at liz@healthmediapolicy.com.
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