In underrepresented communities, health research studies and statistics only tell part of the story unless the root causes of inequity are addressed and real-world impact is shown.

Kat Stafford, the global race and justice editor for Reuters, shared with NPF Covering Community Development fellows her childhood experience with asthma and how it introduced her to health inequity.

“Growing up in a city like Detroit, I lived near an incinerator, lots of auto plants,” Stafford said. During a health crisis, one interaction at a local hospital is etched in her memory.

“The doctor kind of looked at my mom and said, ‘Well, what are you doing wrong?’ essentially. Instead of trying to figure out how to address my medical concerns, he automatically put the blame on my mom. And my mom followed the plan – nightly treatments, morning treatments, everything that we were supposed to do – but he automatically placed the blame on us rather than trying to understand how we got to this point where I had these issues.”

For Stafford, that episode sparked her quest to become a journalist, and to build expertise in exploring how lack of cultural competency and collaboration between public officials and private philanthropy can be harmful to communities. She also came to realize that including the voices of people most affected by health inequity is critical.

“We can’t expect people to let us in to tell their stories if we haven’t done the work to gain their trust,” said Stafford, whose “Birth to Death” series written as national investigative race and global investigations correspondent with the Associated Press won multiple journalism awards. “We need to invest that time as newsrooms into these populations the same way that we’re covering everyone else.”

Stafford advised journalists to outline the framework of the story and the voices you want to include when proposing health inequity stories.

“When we get to our editors, we really need to have a concise pitch to get the green light to do this work,” she said.

Data is also a crucial part of health equity stories, Stafford advised.

“Data is your friend,” she said. “But I also really like to push journalists to reimagine the data that we use. It doesn’t just have to come from these so-called ‘official’ federal sources. You could really work with community organizations because oftentimes they have surveys, they have various types of information that these official sources don’t have.”

Communicating about Public Health in the Communities You Cover

Chrissie Juliano also spoke to the journalists about what she’s learned as executive director of Big Cities Health Coalition, which includes 30 of the nation’s largest urban health departments and serves about 20% of the U.S. population.

Public health, Juliano says, has a messaging problem.

“People don’t know what public health is. People don’t know what public health does. And the words and phrases that public health practitioners use don’t necessarily resonate with the public.”

In research conducted around the release of their Urban Health Agenda, they learned “that public health is important … to a majority of city residents, not nearly as high as homelessness and other issues – which are all public health issues, right? The public doesn’t know that,” she said.

“Public health is really about the health of populations, not necessarily individuals, and really addressing systems and policies as well as prevention,” she said, explaining that a former boss called public health “the activities that happen outside the four walls of a clinic.”

She also said that while many people “think of health as an individual issue,” they also believe “government has a role” in creating opportunities for citizens to be healthy, especially when they understand how inequity has man-made roots.

“Laws and financial policies have pushed certain segments of the population into neighborhoods that have poor air quality, lead in paint and pipes, and little access to transportation and healthcare,” Juliano said.

Journalists can help the public understand public health issues better by avoiding jargon and explaining the specific actions being taken. Juliano also said Big City Health Coalition can help journalists by introducing them to their local health officials and experts in harm reduction and providing city-specific data.

Measure Impact of Community Development Projects, Organizations

1. “Big vision”
2. Community buy-in
3. Partners (for West Side United this includes Rush University Medical Center, Cook County Health, Lurie Children’s Hospital and more as “founding hospitals” plus dozens more major funders, economic, educational and technical partners)
4. Measuring impact

The Covering Equitable Community Development journalism fellowship was sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The National Press Foundation is solely responsible for its content.