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Health Disparities Series Brings Acclaim to The Nation's Health

Posted on: Tuesday, 6 September 2005, 03:00 CDT

A SERIES of articles in The Nation's Health that highlighted community solutions to health disparities has won national acclaim.

In July, the series won a 2005 Clarion Award from the Association for Women in Communications in the category of Newspaper Feature Series, circulation of 100,000 or fewer. The Nation's Health competed against newspapers from across the country for the award and was named the sole winner.

"This award is a great honor for both The Nation's Health and APHA, which actively works to eliminate health disparities," said Michele Late, executive editor of The Nation's Health. "Health disparities are a key contributor to poor health for far too many Americans, and drawing attention to the issue can help put an end to this public health crisis."

The five-part series, authored by Kirn Krisberg, the newspaper's senior editor, was published from December 2003 to May 2004 in The Nation's Health.

The series discussed key health disparity issues and highlighted solutions that health workers and local organizations are using to combat them at the community level. The articles explored black Americans and HIV, breast health and lesbians, work place health disparities and Hispanics, diabetes among American Indians and Alaska Natives, and rural Americans' access to oral health care.

The series included interviews with public health workers and educators from across the country and research into health disparities. In writing the series, Krisberg said she felt it was important to "go beyond just facts and figures" on health disparities.

"By offering examples of programs that are working to eliminate heath disparities, I wanted to give health workers in the field tools they can use to tackle the issue in their own communities," Krisberg said.

The first article in the series, which detailed the ways black community groups are working to confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic, won an Excel Award from the Society of National Association Publications in 2004.

The series tied into APHA's 2004 celebration of National Public Health Week, which had a theme of "Eliminating Health Disparities: Communities Moving from Statistics to Solutions." Many of the community organizations featured in the disparities series also registered their programs into APHA's health disparities database, which was created as part of the 2004 public health week observance. APHA's Health Disparities Community Solutions Database, online at , is available to all Web users and new submissions are welcome.

Also in June, The Nation's Health won an Award of Excellence for news writing in the 2005 Awards for Publication Excellence competition. The Nation's Health was one of 15 winners in the "magapapers" and newspapers category, competing against 140 entrants. The issues reviewed by the judges included news writing by Late, Krisberg and Donya C. Arias, a freelance writer.

Including the two recent awards, The Nation's Health has won nine national awards since 1999. Among them are national awards for news writing, the newspaper's Web site and for the overall newspaper.

A PDF of the full disparities series can be downloaded with an APHA member password at . For more information" on The Nation's Health, visit .

Copyright American Public Health Association Sep 2005

Source: Nation's Health, The

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