Field trip!

The UGA grad students closed out their trip to Chicago with a field trip. Our destination was not a journalistic one. In the words of our fearless leader, Pat Thomas, we needed to get a little culture before departing a blustery Windy City-- a place that is under the mistaken impression that tulips can make 57 degrees feel like spring.

After breakfast and one last glimpse of the exhibits at the Association of Health Care Journalists meeting, we grabbed a cab to the Art Institute of Chicago. There we saw a fabulous Matisse exhibit. It focused on his transformation during the World War I era from impressionist to cubist. Or at least that's my summary of it.

And while the works of this great French master were absolutely fabulous, the exhibit I'll probably remember longer featured the work of William Eggleston. His photographic record of the Deep South in the 1960s and 1970s brought back memories of my childhood in south Georgia.

In addition to his main works in Tennessee, Mississippi, and New Mexico, Eggleston shot in and around Plains in the days before Jimmy Carter won the presidency in November 1976. I grew up just 40 miles from there. Seeing the old cars, mud puddles, and rundown buildings made me think of how little we had for so long in the South--and of how we kept so many in poverty and what amounted to indentured servitude for scores of years. Sad times really, when you think about it.

Katie and I are at O'Hare now waiting to board our delayed flight to Atlanta. Time to wrap it up and post this last blog from AHCJ. It was indeed a great time in Chicago!

Freelancing for health-related trade and professional publications

After spending years in journalism school and developing all the skills needed for creating publishable content for the independent press, why would someone want shift over to working for trade and professional publications and website?

That is one way of stating the question I was asked to address in a session on "Surviving and thriving as a freelancer." Plucked into the last spot of the day on Saturday afternoon at the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists in Chicago, the 75-minute session featured four freelance health care journalists, a senior freelancer, and two editors of magazines.

My role was to bring the perspective of the editor of Pharmacy Today, a magazine published monthly by the American Pharmacists Association. Our association is just one of thousands in the nation's capital, and that's just the start of the association world. There are so many associations across the country (and around the world) that there is even an association for associations (the American Society of Association Executives). And there are so many health care groups that the ASAE has a special committee that tries to meet their special needs.

I made five main points in my 6-minute presentation.

The secret to happiness is finding something you like to do and getting someone to pay you for it. If there is a cause or medical content area a journalist particularly likes, then linking with one or more associations with similar views can be symbiotic.

Within health care, trade and professional associations are generally established to protect the turf of some industry or group of workers. Their editorial products may not be viewed as, and in fact may not be, independent journalism. This limitation or criticism might be more accurate for trade groups, which are more directly concerned with the marketplace, than for professional health care associations, which typically have as their ultimate mission the betterment of patients. Also, in many cases, the limitations on journalists are not much different than in local situations where large employers or advertisers are dealt with carefully.

Associations are not as apt to go for pieces that are critical of their industry or profession as for general information or feel-good articles. But that doesn't mean that anything negative is off base. For some time, I've wanted to cover some of the pharmacists who have ended up in jail. Some of them did really bad things to get there. One told me, "It's easy to get in here, but it's hard to get out." But one Ohio pharmacist was caught in medical-error situation that unfortunately was prosecuted criminally. His is a story that pharmacists need to learn about. Negative or sensitive stories might not be the greatest first pitches to an association editor, but neither does the writer have to feel like they left journalistic principles at the door.

Pitching to associations is not that different from pitching to any publication. The freelancer has to do some homework. Access the association's publications in print and online. Study the content. See how many articles appear to be written by freelancers. Gauge whether the freelancers are people in the field--that is, people trained as the professionals represented by the association--and how many are medical writers or health care journalists.

If the freelancer feels like there is a match on the content and a fit on the type of writing involved, contact the editor with several compatible topics, issues, or angles you'd like to cover. It's probably best to start with e-mail these days, but follow up quickly with a phone call if no response is received. Work with the editor in fleshing out the story, loop back with questions during the interviewing and writing process, and deliver the article on time.

With preparatory spadework and a little luck, the freelancer could soon be one of the go-to writers for an association publishing operation. After that, the possibilities are endless. Many associations publish longer continuing-education pieces, need help with promotions for seminars and conventions, have active social media operations, and publish books and electronic products. A strong health care journalist can be build a lasting relationship with any number of associations--and get paid to do it!

Writing about the complicated stuff: Milwaukee journalist impressed me

Translating complicated jargon and medicalese for patients and a lay audience is not a skill I've have developed all that much. In fact, something as simple as reporting on the peer-review process used by journals has been a real challenge for me.

During a session at the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists on Friday in Chicago (where later in the day I enjoyed pizza at Due's--hence the photograph), John Fauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described Side Effects, an occasional series he's been writing on the intersection of "money, medicine, and patients."

The topics Fauber has tackled really blew me away. "UW linked to ghostwriting," "Physicians' disclosures to UW, journals inconsistent," "Journal editor gets royalties as articles favor devices"--those are just three titles on a long list of articles published over the past year or so. Those are also meaty subjects, ones that cut close to home for me (as a journal editor) and that I would have trouble explaining in plain English.

As Fauber talked, the editor of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Catherine DeAngelis, MD, sat two chairs away. She could only shake her head and look down at her notes as the misbehaviors and ethical problems of fellow medical editors were described.

I'm looking forward to the end of the semester when I have time to read Fauber's articles word for word. Leading readers in such important but complicated issues--and engaging them with an effective narrative--is a real talent and a great service to society. I'd like to get better at it, and Fauber has much to teach me.

Chicago: My kind of town

I love Chicago. It's great to be back in this city of Sandburg's big shoulders for the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ). The four days of the meeting offer a unique opportunity to the UGA grad students in attendance--including me!--to meet new people in this new part of our lives!

After arriving at O'Hare on Thursday, I took the "L" into the city. On the train, I used my iPhone to figure out where to change trains to get closer to the Hyatt at McCormick Place. But when I arrived at Roosevelt and disembarked, I couldn't get the Web page to reload and show me the number of the bus I needed to take from there. So I flagged a cab and forked over the eight bucks, figuring I'd already seen enough of the real people anyway.

In my hotel room, I was awed when the bellhop opened the curtains. This skyline photograph is taken from the room, with Lake Michigan and Soldier Field ("da Bears") on the right and all the city's big buildings filling up the rest. A little off the the left edge of the photograph is the iconic Sears Tower (actually it's now the Willis Tower--Willis was my dad's middle name, who would of thought).

At the meeting itself, I took in a session on how to use Web-based software to map demographics and health conditions. During two newsmaker briefings CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, MPA, presented.

Frieden announced increased efforts at the Atlanta-based agency to reduce smoking levels among Americans, which are currently stuck at about 20% of adults. CDC wants to use state-based, high-impact strategies to get more people to quit using tobacco.

Sebelius discussed the new health care reform law and its implications for Americans. She seemed very genuine when asked in the question-and-answer period about her disappointments during the yearlong, arduous process of debate and discussion over health care reform. Sebelius was particularly disheartened when provisions that would have been very beneficial to patients--such as discussions about end-of-life care with physicians--were reduced to inaccurate sound bites ("death panels") and then removed from the bills solely for political reasons.

An opening reception closed the day by providing a taste of all the different types of people who are at AHCJ. Reporters, media relations folks at hospitals and other institutions, students, and freelancers are all here.

It's going to be a fabulous meeting--and the town will be great too!

Multimedia, take 2

I revised my multimedia Soundslides presentation to focus more on Oconee residents who lack resources.

Professor Thomas watched my first version and gave me some good advice. In addition to using too many photos and changing them too fast, I was trying to do much. I was bringing in the problems of people in the county who have too much money (especially kids with disposable income that can be funneled into drugs and alcohol).

So here's an attempt to get my new and improved Oconee nutrition multimedia project in an online form that even Windows users can access! Access my UGA website. The presentation should start in your Web browser. If you have any problems accessing this from an Apple computer, try the Firefox browser--or just go the iDisk mentioned in the last blog and click on the index.html file inside the folder.

Happy viewing!

Multimedia project posted on iDisk

Hello everyone. I wrapped up my multimedia project a day early. Since I have to fly to Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon, I decided not to take a chance on bad Internet connections for the photos, audio files, and all.

If you're on an Apple, you can get to the presentation quickly from the Finder menu. Under iDisk, go to "Other user's public folder." Enter Lmposey when prompted. You can then click on the index.html file (inside the "publish_to_web" folder), and the presentation should play in your preferred Web browser.

On Windows, navigate to http://homepage.mac.com/lmposey in a Web browser. Copy the entire folder to your computer, and then open the index.html file in your browser.

Any other difficulties, just let me know.

I pulled this together in Soundslides, so it's a Flash file. Oh, thanks to Steve Jobs and his urinary competition with Adobe, that means you can't view this presentation on an iPhone (or an iPad)!

Enjoy!

Cruising the 'hood

The 'hood? No, this post is not about Oconee County. Or is it?

As I drove through northeast Washington, DC, last Saturday night, on my way back to the University of Maryland campus from a dinner downtown, I thought about Rebecca Skloot and the research she did in coming up with her bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot had spoken at UGA two days earlier and had dinner with the health and medical journalism students that evening at the home of our professor, Pat Thomas.

In the book and at dinner, Skloot described one of her early ventures in search of the descendants of Lacks, whose cervical cells, dubbed HeLa, initiated a revolution in cell biology. In the late 1990s, she drove through a decaying subdivision where many African Americans had lived since the time Lacks died in 1951. Skloot drove in circles, going time and again past groups of current residents who stared at her, wondering what this white lady from Portland, Ore., was doing in the 'hood.

Having grown up in the South during the civil rights era, I have known blacks all my life. Some were the maids who raised me. Others were lifelong workers on my father's and his father's farms. Some were in my classes in the eighth grade, the first year of "freedom of choice" integration. And others came to the "white" high school in the 10th grade, when the traditionally white and black schools were consolidated and our mascot was changed from the Rebels to the Cougars.

Skloot lacked such a background when she began pursuing the Lacks story. The 'hood where she searched for clues to Lacks's story is about 45 miles north of the Washington 'hood through which I was driving, and it probably was worse in the late 1990s than what I was seeing in DC last Saturday night. But, if I had been looking for a story that night, would I have had the nerve to stop at these stores, drive through these neighborhoods, and get out and talk with people in search of a story?

I guess the question comes down to whether I've ever been so intrigued and obsessed by a story as Skloot was with the Lacks legend. I have written and edited hundreds of articles and even a few books, but they were ones I could usually research at a computer screen or in a library. Until I entered this master's program, my search for news sources had been on a well-lit path, one where I could rely on corporate and government announcements and a softball interview or two.

But now I've been confronted with real life, with the need to talk to people, as Prof. Thomas put it once, who don't look like I do. In the fall, that meant African Americans, Hispanic Americans, the unemployed. This semester, with Oconee County for a beat, everyone pretty much looks like me. But they often don't share my personal views on a lot of hot-button issues. I'm not sure which one has been more difficult—it's been just as hard to approach people who don't think like I do as those who don't look like I do.

All of which means that I have a lot of respect for Rebecca Skloot and her perseverance in getting this book researched and written. She really wanted to give voice to a woman whose life was taken silently during a period of segregation but whose cells live on today.

Maybe one day I'll have enough passion for a story that I will go into the 'hood in search of answers--perhaps even into some of those frightening 'hoods in Oconee County with the half-million-dollar McMansions. Maybe.

Brilliant ideas: Always a staple at ACC

By the time I arrived at the Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology on the morning of Tuesday, March 16, I had already had my fill of conventioneering.

Having just spent the past five days in Washington, D.C., at the Annual Meeting of my employer, the American Pharmacists Association, my brain was tired of being on autopilot (Hi. How are you? Good to see you). The sleep deprivation, complicated by the lost hour on Saturday night when Daylight Savings Time began, had me barely awake, much less functional.

But it's hard to be at ACC and not pick up on the energy. People are hustling this way and that, attendees sitting in the conversation pits at Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center excitedly trade information about stents and surgical staples, hawkers try to stuff the convention daily into the hands of some 30,000 passersby, and the television crews liven up the press area.

So, after a few minutes in the hall, I was wide awake. The day went swimmingly. The first news conference was fabulous, with lots of great information about warfarin and genetic testing. I was able to reach a presenter from a previous day as she traveled home by car. I walked into a session just as the speaker I wanted to hear began and was able to get interviews of two other speakers at the end.

Soon I was cruising the exhibits, about as fresh as one can be on a couple hours of sleep. I ran into someone I know at McGraw-Hill, which publishes a couple of my books. We had a great conversation until the show closed and workers began rolling up the carpet while I was standing on it.

On the way back to the media center, I walked past a video recording studio set up in the hallway. I stopped to watch. At my own convention, I had interviewed several people on camera, but I did so from off camera. We had recorded in a normal convention center meeting room, and the noise spillover from outside was a problem at times.

That's when I realized this studio-in-the-way was a great idea, one I want to implement at the APhA meeting next year in Seattle. Not only does it look really cool, but people will later want to watch the video they saw being recorded. The natural sounds of the convention center are expected in that setting, thus avoiding the need to try to create the total silence of a television studio. And maybe by next year, I'll be more comfortable being on camera myself!

Conventions, tiring as they can be, are a great source of ideas. Even when your job is communicating trends in medicine and health care to pharmacists, you can pick up a wonderful new concept at a meeting about the heart. As I drove back to Athens, chugging Coke Zero and chewing on ice and peppermint candy to stay awake, I realized what a great six days it had been, networking and hobnobbing with thousands of my closest strangers.

Green v. green, left v. right: Oconee holds a town hall meeting

I slipped quietly into the back of a town hall meeting held by the Oconee County Commissioners on February 16. I didn't have any specific purpose at the session. I just thought it would provide good background on what people in the county had on their minds.

I was right. While most of the discussion veered far from health and medicine, some very useful insights came my way. The first thing I noticed was that someone was recording video of the session right in front of me. I thought the fellow looked familiar. When he started speaking on mitigation and destruction of wetlands in the county, I realized it was our own Dr. Becker, a Grady College professor.

Since I could get online using the free wireless system in the Oconee County Civic Center, I started Googling around for background on the wetlands issue. I found a letter Dr. Becker had written recently in the Athens Banner-Herald and also a blog in which he is posting his thoughts and observations about Oconee County in voluminous detail.

Several other people, all sitting on the same side of the room as Dr. Becker, rose in turn to speak in favor of a wetlands resolution that has sat dormant before the Commissioners since last spring. One of the people on this side of the room made a joke about people realizing there was more than one kind of "green" in the county. He (or was it a she--I don't remember now) was referring to the green money that developers seek, while others are more worried about the environmental "green" issues.

When that person stops speaking, the guy moving the microphone from one side of the room said, "OK--now a question from the right." Suddenly, it hit me that he had been saying "question from the right" and "question from the left" all along. All the environmentally green comments, and other generally progressive/liberal comments, were coming from the stage left side of the room. On stage right, the developers and other more conservative people sat.

Oconee County is truly a divided county. It has been unabashedly conservative. In 2004, the county voted to re-elect George W. Bush by a 3:1 margin (73 percent to 27 percent). McCain/Palin attracted 71 percent of the votes in 2008. But a few liberals are living here, and they occasionally make their voices heard.

That is what I learned at this town hall meeting. Oconee County may seem like a wealthy, conservative enclave whose citizens mostly commute to Athens to work. But in many ways, it's just like every other place. It has problems that need to be addressed, people who differ in their outlooks, and issues that can't be swept under the rug by ideologies.

Great background indeed!

Oconee County: Things change, sometimes

As a young boy riding with my parents from south Georgia to visit my older siblings who were "off at school" in Athens, Oconee County has always meant one thing to me: You're almost to the Classic City!

At the time, in the 1960s, the 20-something miles of Oconee County consisted of rolling hills and what appeared to be small cattle farms, with an occasional chicken house mixed in here and there. Not long after you entered the county on south US 441, a big barn sat off to the right, with "See Rock City" painted in fresh colors. Beyond that, the wasn't much else between the county line and the small towns of Farmington, Bishop, and the county seat of Watkinsville. Even after Watkinsville, the road was mostly undeveloped until you entered Clarke County on the Macon Highway and came to the stop sign at South Milledge Avenue, where the Davis Brothers restaurant was a great place for us to meet my brother and sister and have lunch too.

Today, it's safe to say that the southern part of Oconee County is not very different than it was 40 years ago. The barn has long since collapsed, but if you know where to look, you can still see the pile of rotten boards that are gradually disintegrating. Farmington is about the same, but the train station has been fixed up into some sort of new-fangled tourist trap. In Bishop, things start to change. The antique stores beckon, selling buyers what sometimes looks like cleaned-up junk that probably sat around someone's yard for most of the 20th century.

As you leave Bishop, the subdivision signs start sprouting. And 4 miles later, where Watkinsville used to start--well, you don't even go through Watkinsville anymore. A bypass built in the 1990s takes you halfway between the actual town and an area called Butler's Crossing, an intersection that looks pretty much like north Atlanta or any other rapidly growing suburb. A Publix sits across the street from a Bell's grocery store, and the ubiquitous dualing chain drug stores are catacornered from each other.

In short, today's Oconee County is centered at Butler's Crossing. The county courthouse still sits on Main Street in Watkinsville, but most other county buildings are along Georgia 53 between town and Butler's Crossing. Subdivisions have replaced farms all along Hog Mountain and Mars Hills Roads, which form the intersection at Butler's. Businesses sit next to homes in a patchwork that only zone-lacking Georgia can produce. Both high schools are in new buildings not far away, near the recently built Civic Center for the arts and Veterans Park, which has sports fields and walking paths.

If you live in this crescent of the county, you are most likely one of the reasons that Oconee has the highest per-capita income in the state. Like 90% of other people in Oconee, you're white, and you're younger than the rest of Georgia, on the average. Everything you need is a short drive away, including the office buildings, urgent-care centers, and strip malls that have sprung up along Georgia 316 as it approaches Athens from Atlanta. In fact, that's probably the road you take to work, since at least half of the employed people in Oconee work in Athens–Clarke County, mostly at the University of Georgia. Doctors, exercise studios, all kinds of shops, veterinarians--everything is in your neighborhood.

But if you live in the rest of Oconee County, everything is far away. If you're well off, as many are, you can afford to drive to Butler's Crossing, or even to Athens or Madison, for shopping. For the 7% of Oconee residents who live in poverty, services are not very accessible. Even if you have transportation, the cost of gas to get to shopping areas could be more than you have to spend once you get there. Without a car, you're stranded in a food desert.

For this semester, I'll be getting to know Oconee County on a deeper level. By covering the heath beat in this rapidly growing but sometimes conflicted county, I hope to explore those areas of health and medicine that challenge citizens of Oconee, including those who live in affluence and those not so lucky. It should be an interesting ride, one with Oconee as the destination this time, not just the last thing that stood between me and Athens.