GBO NEWS: Health Journalism 2019; Nat’l Press Foundation Taps 21 for Alzheimer’s Fellowships; Reporter’s Struggle with U.S. Med System; StriaNews Marks 1st Year; Centenarian Blue Zones (How They Afford Long Life); Gen Beat Reporter Reflects at 90; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Celebrating 26 Years.
April 23, 2019 — Volume 26, Number 5
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: News Unredacted.
1. CONFERENCE BEAT: *** AHCJ’s Health Journalism 2019in Baltimore, May 2-5.
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** Health Journalism Fellows Named;21 Alzheimer’s Reporters Tapped for National Press Foundation, April 28-May 1.
3. THE BLACK HOLE LEDE NOT WRITTEN: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to That Black Hole
4. THE STORYBOARD:
*** “Washington State’s Public Long-Term Care Program Is On The Verge Of Becoming Law,” by Howard Gleckman, Forbes;
*** “Health Care Journalist Struggles to Navigate Her Own Health Crisis,”by Trudy Lieberman, Tarbell;
*** Plus Lieberman’s “Canada, Eh? Don’t Fall for These Tired Old Canards About Health Care Rationing,”USC Annenberg’s Health Journalism Center;
*** “The Day My Life Changed Forever: For this Millennial, Caregiving Comes First Now,” by Beth Braveman, MemoryWell;
*** BLUE ZONES Seriesby PBSNext AvenueManaging Editor Richard Eisenbergon the financial side of centenarian-rich places from Okinawa, Japan, to Loma Linda Calif.
5. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** StriaNewsMarks First Year; *** Anna Gorman Leaves Kaiser Health News (KHN)—and Reporting; *** El Paso Border Reflections from Gen Beat Stalwart Ruth Taber, 90.
1. CONFERENCE BEAT
*** Health Journalism 2019 Arrives in Baltimore, May 2-5, with four days of awards, freelance PitchFest clinics, medical field trips, exhibits and expert panels on wide-ranging topics, such as the opioid epidemic, drug prices, “psychedelic science,”women’s health, and the effects of violence on health.
Baltimore is a great location for the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists, being ever so close to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and other national repositories of expertise. And it’s even closer to the health benefits of the national pastime (baseball, folks, not Trump’s tweets). That is, the conference location, the Baltimore Hilton, is next to Camden Yards, where the Orioles will be hosting the Tampa Bay Rays that week. AHCJ also will be announcing this year’s Excellence in Health Care Journalism Awards winners.
Of particular interest to GBONews readers will be a panel titled, “Successful Aging in Place: What’s Working?” Moderating it will be veteran independent health-and-aging writer Liz Seegert, who serves as AHCJ’s core-topic leader on aging. The panel will address the growing desire ofolder adults to age in their own homes and communities.
It will highlight several programs that are helping them do that with social services, nutrition and medical support — “along with help from friends and neighbors,” according to AHCJ. Speakers will be former acting head of the U.S. Administration on Aging Robyn I. Stone, DrPH,co-director of the LeadingAge Long-Term Services and Supports; Sarah Szanton, PhD.,director, Center for Innovative Care in Aging at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing; and Peggy Simpson, a freelance journalists, a board member of the Village to Village Network, the national web of nonprofit programs connecting seniors with affordable services to help them remain at home.
Sessions also of special relevance for seniors will be, “Do drug pricing reform efforts promise consumer relief?” moderated by Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Julie Appleby, and “Alzheimer’s to Zika: Cell Mitochondria in Disease and Treatment,” with moderator Tina H. Saey, senior writer at Science Newsand a cast of trillions of scientific brain cells.
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE
***Also, Congratulations are due to those selected this year to attend AHCJ’s Baltimore conference on fellowships in several categories. (See their website for a full list). While some were chosen from particular states for these expenses-paid fellowships, other categories were nationwide. For example, those in the Ethnic Media Health Journalism category include, Penny Dickerson, Florida Courier, Tallahassee, Fla.; Antonio Flores-Villalobos, producer/host, La Voz- Radio Kingston, Woodstock, N.Y.; Cecilia Hernandez-Cromwell, news director anchor, Telemundo Oklahoma, Oklahoma City; and Maria Ortiz-Briones, health reporter, Vida en el Valle, Hanford, Calif.
***Moreover, the Application Deadline is July 1, to apply for AHCJ’s Journalism Fellowships on Women’s Health. Selected reporters will spend three days in Washington, D.C., this September, increasing “their understanding of and ability to report accurately on a range of women’s health issues.” The program, supported by the Office on Women’s Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will examine such topics as reproductive health, mental health, heart attacks, health policy, violence against women, cancers, human trafficking, as well as research with women and its clinical applications.
Candidates should be working journalists living within the United States who qualify for AHCJ professional membership – please check here to see if you qualify. The fellowship includes AHCJ membership (new or renewed), travel expenses within the United States, a food stipend and lodging. Direct questions on the fellowship to Susan Cunningham at susan@healthjournalism.org or 573-882-2203.
*** 21 Reporters Get Alzheimer’s Fellowships: Lest we forget, back-pats are due to the 21 reporters selected by the National Press Foundation (NPF) for next week’s fellowship training program on “Understanding the Latest on Dementia Issues,” April 28-May 1, in Washington, D.C. This year’s program, sponsored by AARP, will cover the latest research, diagnostic tools, treatment, economic impact, caregiving and high-tech apps for patients.
The fellows include: Mayra Acevedo, WIPR-TV,San Juan, Puerto Rico; Ayanna Alexander, Bloomberg Law; Susan Berger, Freelance (Washington Post, Chicago Tribune); Maria Clark, NOLA.com, Times-Picayune, New Orleans; Lois M. Collins, Deseret News, Salt Lake City; Lisa Esposito, U.S. News & World Report; Katherine Ellen Foley, Washington, D.C., Quartz.com; Mary Kane, Washington, D.C., Kiplinger’s Retirement Report; Ron Leuty, San Francisco Business Times; Cynthia McCormick, Cape Cod Times; Barbara Morse Silva, NBC10 WJAR, Cranston, R.I. (Southern New England); Rachel Nania, WTOP-FM, Washington, D.C.; Maria Ortiz-Briones, Vida en el Valle(California Central Valley); Leslie Renken, Journal Star (Peoria, Ill.); Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Paula Spencer Scott, Parade Magazine; Robin Seaton Jefferson, Forbes; Marisa Venegas, video producer, Miami/Fort Lauderdale Area; Veronica Villafañe, AARP and AARP en Español; and David Wahlberg, Wisconsin State Journal, Madison.
3. THE BLACK HOLE LEDE NOT WRITTEN
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to That Black Hole– Did international journalism miss this lede about that glazed donut in space? The science is a couple of PhD’s and a post-doc away from this editor’s understanding, but I was especially struck by the concluding press-briefing remarks by Schep Doeleman, PhD. He headed the remarkable Event Horizon effort to turn the earth into the ultimate camera obscura that captured the first photograph of a black hole.
Doeleman commented, “Over the past decade the greatest accomplishment has been the building of a team. As I said, we’re now 200 strong with many institutes and over 20 countries and regions.”
Their “greatest accomplishment,” international cooperation. Imagine that. An one listening at the White House (speaking of black holes)?
4. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Washington State’s Public Long-Term Care Program Is On The Verge Of Becoming Law,” by Howard Gleckman, Forbes( April 18, 2019): A veteran financial journalist and senior fellow on aging and retirement policy at the Tax Policy Center, Gleckman, also author of the book Caring for Our Parents, reports that Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee has pledged to sign thenation’s first state long-term care insurance program, recently passed at the statehouse.
Once the State House and Senate resolve minor differences in their versions an d the bill is signed, the Long-Term Supports and Services Trust Program would be funded through a 0.58 percent tax on employee wages starting in 2022, the story says. Similar to Medicare, workers would have to pay into the program for 10 years before being able to receive benefits.
In Washington State, Gleckman writes, House bill passed easily, 63-33. He adds, “The Senate vote was closer, 26-22, with most Republicans opposing the measure.” He notes further that several other states that are considering long-term care bills, as well as that Maine voters rejected such a program in 2018.
Having previously done extensive international analysis of continuing-care programs, Gleckman adds, “Public long-term care insurance is widely available throughout the developed world. Efforts to enact a federal program have made little progress in recent years, though last year Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) proposed a universal public back-end plan. However, Pallone, who now chairs the House Energy & Commerce Committee, appears more focused on health care these days.”
*** “Health Care Journalist Struggles to Navigate Her Own Health Crisis,” by Trudy Lieberman, Tarbell(Feb. 25, 2019): Subhead: “A two month coma, a misdiagnosis and a $3 million bill.” One of the most distinguished journalists on health care and policy, the New York-based Lieberman, found her understanding of the U.S. health care system sorely tested as she experienced it firsthand.
Lieberman, long a senior contributor to Columbia Journalism Review and previously Consumer Reports, wrote, “On November 11, 2017, I suffered a catastrophic health event that left me on the brink of death for weeks. From early that morning, I was very thirsty and lethargic. I couldn’t get out of the bathtub myself and needed help dressing. I complained my left arm hurt. I couldn’t make my weekly trip to the Green Market. By the afternoon, my husband called 911 . . . . I emerged from a coma two months later, in January. I learned my diagnosis—severe sepsis with shock, pneumonia, and aplastic anemia—though the cause remained opaque. My left arm was tightly bandaged; there had been a surgical procedure to clean an abscess, which may have caused or contributed to my catastrophic organ shutdown.”
She continued, “All told, my medical odyssey spanned four months, four hospitals, and two states. During that time, my body atrophied: I would have to relearn to walk, get out of bed, sit in a chair, eat with a knife and fork, swallow scrambled eggs without fatally aspirating them. Medical provider charges ultimately totaled roughly $3 million, including four months of occupational and physical therapy.” Medicare and her supplemental policy “whittled that total down to about $2,500 in out-of-pocket costs. Medicare’s prohibitions on surprise or balance billing saved us from bankruptcy.”
Lieberman goes on, “For more than half of my 50-year career as a reporter, I’ve covered the health care industry. I’ve investigated long-term care facilities, evaluated health insurance, and interviewed medical experts. When I came out of the coma, my brain seemed to me to function normally. So did my hands. I recall thinking, I can still be a reporter. Yet my hard-won expertise did little to help me navigate my experience as a patient.” The piece is an illuminating and sobering read.
*** “Canada, Eh? Don’t Fall for These Tired Old Canards About Health Care Rationing” is another must-read health-policy analysis by Trudy Lieberman. It ran recently on the USC Annenberg’s Health Journalism Center (April 5, 2019). She pops the bubble huffed and puffed in the media again, this time by New York Times’ columnist David Brooks, who claims falsely that a single-payer system such as Canada’s would inevitably lead to health-care rationing in the United States.
In detail, Lieberman cites Canadian research showing that the allegedly long waiting lists presumably suffered by our northern neighbors mainly apply to electives. For instance, Lieberman quotes a recent study by the independent Canadian Institute for Health Informationthat while “88 percent are getting hip-fracture repairs in a timely way, waiting lists for less urgent services like some hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery are going up. The waits vary from province to province.” One researcher told her, “People in Canada aren’t going bankrupt to get basic care.”
In the meantime, Lieberman wrote, “Never mind that U.S. health care spending is quickly climbing toward 20 percent of GDP, and the need to bring that spending more in line with other nations by controlling costs is precisely what the opposition to Medicare for All and its many iterations is about. According to the latest report from The Commonwealth Fund, the U.S. ranked dead last in a comparison with 10 other countries on various measures. It also ranked at the bottom when it came to equity, access, and health care outcomes. On the access measure, 60 percent of doctors report patients have trouble paying for medicine or out-of-pocket costs, twice as much as the next highest countries . . . . That the U.S. rations care by patients’ economic status and price is a truism we haven’t acknowledged until recently. The poorer you are, the less likely you’ll get the care. No longer, though, is evidence of this inconvenient truth hidden from public view.”
*** “The Day My Life Changed Forever: For this Millennial, Caregiving Comes First Now,” by Beth Braveman, MemoryWell (March 28, 2019): Subhead: “Caregiver shortage prompts more millennials to take on responsibilities and stresses of elder caregiving sooner.” Braverman reminds that family caregiving is truly intergenerational with her account of Rachel Hiles, whose life change at age 28 in 2015, when her grandmother fell, fracturing a vertebra. Hiles then “took on nearly all of that care by herself. Soon she was doing laundry, preparing meals, coordinating medications and doctors’ appointments, and changing her grandmother’s colostomy bag.”
The story goes on, “She is far from alone. An estimated 10 million Millennials provide daily care to family and friends, according to AARP. For nearly three in five of them, that includes helping with activities of daily living such as eating and bathing; and for more than half, it involves performing complex medical or nursing tasks. Their caregiving responsibilities often hit as they are trying to build their own careers or start a family.”
In addition, “Millennials are taking on the role of family caregiver simply because there is no one else available to do it. A national caregiving shortage means that the adults available to answer the call for caregivers have to get younger . . . . Millennials’ parents and grandparents are living longer than previous generations did, and families are smaller and more geographically spread out than they used to be.”
*** BLUE ZONES: This series by PBS Next Avenue Managing Editor Richard Eisenberg examines the financial side of the five centenarian regions described in National Geographic writer Dan Buettner’s 2008 bestselling book, The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. Eisenberg asks how the people in the Blue Zones make their money last.
Part 1:“How the World’s Oldest People Make Their Money Last” (“What we can learn from centenarians in Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula.”
Part 2: “How the World’s Oldest People in Asia and Europe Make Their Money Last” Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italyand Ikaria, Greece.
Part 3: “How the Oldest People in America’s Blue Zone Make Their Money Last” —“What they’re doing right in Loma Linda, Calif., and what the rest of us can learn.” Eisenberg wrote the series supported by a 2019 Journalists in Aging Fellowship from the Gerontological Society of America; GBONews’ parent, Journalists Network on Generations; and The Commonwealth Fund.
5. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Congratulations to StriaNews and Its Founder Susan Donelly for marking its first birthday. The news-information site has reached “nearly 30,000 professionals in aging,” according to the website. Although the annual subscription is $98 per year, Donnelly, the former publisher of PBS’s Next Avenuesite, will provide complimentary access to journalists who send a request along with your contact information and media affiliation. Say whether you’re on staff, or add a brief note on your freelance work in an e-mail to sdonley@strianews.com. Put “GBONews-Stria Subscription Request”in the subject line.
*** Anna Gorman Leaves Kaiser Health News (KHN)—and Reporting: Oh, no! Gorman, a topflight health reporter and former Journalists in Aging Fellow announce her “bittersweet career news” that she departed KHN after five years—and journalism after 20-plus years. On May 1, she starts her new chapter as Director of Community Partnerships and Programs at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. To say this is a loss to journalism would be an understatement, but the tidings are very good for the citizens of L.A. County (including members of this editor’s family).
*** Generations-Beat Stalwart Ruth Taber, 90, e-mailed GBONews.org from her unretirement perch in El Paso, Texas, with her keen-eyed views on the border. Taber, who long contributed to the El Paso Times and NBC’s KTSM-TV, now writes both for the El Paso Inc.portal, and blogs independently about food, travel and the excesses of the “Orange King.” Her recent missive noted, “It’s a yukky weekend with all the mumbling on the Mueller report etc.”
She, went on: The incredible amount of political hypocrisy slithering through our lives is enough to add a few years of anxiety/fear to what should be a calm, comfortable existence. Living in El Paso, on the border with thousands of wonderful people crossing both ways every day for umpteen years has made this a fantastic retirement choice for us. Crisis? Danger? Bubbe meises!!” she declared,invoking her native New York Yiddish for a grandmother’s exposure of a tale failing to pass as kosher. Taber added, “THERE IS NO CRISIS ON THE BORDER!”
Taber, who holds a master’s in public health, continued, Until 9/11 we often shopped in Juarez for groceries, services, shoes and more; after that event we cut back on crossing — it took too long to go through immigration. I still get my eye drops (glaucoma) there . . . . Don’t get me started on drug prices — except to say that my Lumigan made by Allergan used to cost about $70 here (one month supply, approximately) and now the same medication is closer to $200. Allergan moved its headquarters to Ireland to cut their taxes — and the drops are made all over the world. No generics available since they were able to lower the amount of the main ingredient, showing it was still efficacious, and thus in a court case were able to call it a “new” drug — extending its [patent-protected] high price life. BTW – the drops cost me between $30 and $40 in Mexico – depending on the seller.
These days most of my writing is about food and an occasional piece on ageism or health care . . . . Do you remember when they were arguing about the Medicare [Part D] drug program (under George W. Bush) that there was a section on financial inducements for medical students who would choose geriatrics? Whatever happened to that?
My gurus in medical care for elders are Dr. Nortin Hadler, whose book, Rethinking Aging(University of North Carolina Press, 2011) is a must–especially for physicians–and Dr. Atul Gawande, who is one of today’s rare physicians/surgeons who cares about and cares for people . . . Medicare for All? Just a saying at this time — phased as a possibility. Kaiser for All suits me too. I recall a fantastic article by the late Princeton health policy expert Uwe Reinhardt, who pointed out how much less it cost to run Medicare compared to private insurance. I also remember Dr. Morris Fishbein and the AMA in the 1930’s screaming about terrible socialism! Instead of socialism, which most people don’t understand, how about ETHICAL capitalism.
In a separate e-message Taber commented, Alas, we have a society full of individuals who must believe in immortality and are also lacking critical and analytical thinking skills. (Some doubters, though–how else do you explain the big market for youth/memory cures? Recently wrote to the dean of Yale Public Health School, complaining that there doesn’t seem to be any push for course work pertaining to our aging population. He responded with a few weak examples of clinical studies on aging [at Yale]. When I was there in 1953 quitting smoking was the big deal–and if you reached 60–good for you! When I read the GBONews reports on journalists citing the over use of antibiotics and on other medications and treatments, I nod my head sadly, since I’ve been writing and speaking about this for more than 25 years: Our over screening, over diagnosing, over treating, and over prescribing by uninformed MD’s and other health care workers is worse than pathetic. Geriatricians? Geriatric Psychiatrists? Fageddaboutit! The least desirable specialties on residency programs. Follow the money if you want to diagnose our Health Care ills.
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2019 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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