USC Launches Health Care Reporting Project

By Alex Boekelheide on September 22, 2009 8:01 AM

The USC Annenberg School for Communication has announced a partnership with the California HealthCare Foundation to do in-depth reporting on health policy issues throughout the state.

Funded by a three-year, $3.29 million grant, the California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting at the USC Annenberg School will team with journalists from traditional and emerging media to report on the most vexing health care issues facing the state: quality, access and cost.

“We are pleased and excited to launch such a critical venture with the California HealthCare Foundation,” Dean Ernest J. Wilson III. “In an era when traditional media are facing shrinking resources to cover the important issues of our society, we are fulfilling one of the school’s critical tenets: to be of service to all people. There is no better time and no better topic.”

The California HealthCare Foundation is an independent philanthropy committed to improving the way health care is delivered and financed in California.

Throughout its 12-year history, the foundation has shown a commitment to supporting and producing nonpartisan research and analysis to support evidence-based decision-making in government and the private sector.

“At this very turbulent time in the evolution of California’s media, it is important to support thoughtful, explanatory reporting on these crucial health care issues,” said Mark D. Smith, president and CEO of the Oakland-based foundation.

Leading the center will be journalism professor Michael Parks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Los Angeles Times editor, who recently completed a seven-year term as director of the journalism school at USC Annenberg.

Parks will chair the center’s board of advisers and lead the center’s development. A nationwide search is under way for an editor in chief and a staff of journalists. The staff, to be based primarily in Los Angeles, will include one reporter in Sacramento.

“We are eager to dig into the health care issues that most affect Californians and provide the facts and information they need to make sense of the debate over reform of health care,” Parks said. “Through our partnerships with California newspapers and broadcasters, and with the staff we will recruit under this grant, I believe the center will provide much-needed impartial information on the difficult issues in health care, but will also be able to analyze proposed solutions to these problems objectively. And our work will be rooted into the communities affected by these issues, so people will understand the stakes in terms of their lives and the health of their families.”

Last year, Parks led a six-month pilot of the center concept and completed reports with the Merced Sun-Star, The Fresno Bee, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, The Redding Searchlight and The North County Times.

“This is a potent and trailblazing model,” said Mike Tharp, executive editor of the Merced Sun-Star. “The center’s resources, in the form of partnership with an editor, reporter and photographer, let us produce a series that I nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The series still resonates around our community.”

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