President Bob Meyers

Bob Meyers joined the National Press Foundation in 1993 and became president and chief operating officer in 1995. It is one of the oldest professional journalism development organizations in the world. Under his leadership NPF’s educational programs for journalists working on all platforms have significantly expanded, and are now done in Washington, D.C., around the U.S. and around the world.

NPF’s U.S.-focused programs cover issues on cancer, retirement, Alzheimer’s disease, business and politics. It has a regular series of briefings on Capitol Hill issues, and a year-long series of meetings for journalists new to Washington. NPF has collaborated with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Vanderbilt University, the Wharton School, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California San Diego, the Center on Congress at Indiana University, POLITICO and others.

Internationally NPF has developed the model of organizing training programs for developing world journalists prior to major international health meetings. It has collaborative relationships with the International AIDS Society, the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and the AIDS Vaccine Enterprise. Using a proven method of preparing journalists to cover technical subjects, at the conferences and back home, since 2002 NPF has organized three- and four-day programs prior to conferences in Barcelona, Bangkok, Toronto, Sydney, Cape Town, Mexico City, Vienna, Cancun  and Berlin.  By 2011 more than 500 international journalists from 94 countries had attended its programs, done under the banner of Journalist to Journalist ™.

Prior to joining the National Press Foundation, Meyers was Director of the Harvard Journalism Fellowship for Advanced Studies in Public Health (1989 –1993) and Managing Director of the Center for Health Communication at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post, the former Specialist Editor at The San Diego Union, and the author of two books. The first, "Like Normal People" (1978), is the story of his mentally retarded younger brother and his efforts to achieve a more normal life, set against the background of worldwide changes in the field; the book became an ABC-TV "Movie of the Week" (1979). His second book was "DES: The Bitter Pill” (1981), the story of a widely used anti-miscarriage drug that didn't work and became a legal, social and pharmacological phenomenon.

He is a member of the Fellowship Advisory Board of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. He has spoken or led journalism classes at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Tsinghua University, Beijing, and in programs organized by Tartu University in Tallinn, Estonia, Kaunas, Lithuania, Lodj, Poland and Johannesburg, South Africa. He has moderated or appeared on panels in France, Germany, Shanghai, the United Nations (NY), Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

Bob has been honored by the American Medical Writers Association (1984) the San Diego County Medical Society (1989), the Asia-Pacific Symposium on Press (2004) among others. A native New Yorker, he was educated in the New York City public schools, and holds a B.A. degree in English literature from UCLA (1965). He was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Health Communication at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1987-88.

His email address is Bob (at) nationalpress.org.

Contact Bob Meyers at
bob@nationalpress.org