From left to right, David Kohn, Kondwani Munthali, and Harro Albrecht
Each class is composed of one journalist from the U.S., one from Europe, and one from a developing country.
"We thought if we could educate three fellows each year in the broad field of global health, we could have an impact on coverage generally and on greater public understanding of issues involved in attacking major diseases in underdeveloped countries," said Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University.
Recently Albrecht, Munthali, and Kohn took time from their hectic schedule of studies and reporting to share their perspectives, early experiences, and reflections on global health with HPH NOW.
"This is a wonderful opportunity to think big," said Kohn, who is a medical and science reporter for The Baltimore Sun. "Every [journal] article I read would make a great series. Every class I take, I write down bunches of story ideas."
Kohn became interested in global health while covering health issues in Baltimore, a city with declining life expectancy in some neighborhoods. On the job, the daily newspaper beat reporter has little time to explore those bigger issues, he said. Instead, most work is reactive, covering highlighted studies from the major journals or local medical and research news.
Munthali, an HIV/AIDS activist turned news radio producer, might consider himself lucky if his audience showed the same high interest in health news as Kohn's readers. In 2000, Munthali published an article on how AIDS was killing 70,000 citizens annually in Malawi, a report that is acknowledged as the first front-page health story in the country's largest daily newspaper.
"You can't sell health news," said Munthali, a producer of current affairs and health news at Malawi Broadcasting Corporation. "Other needs like poverty are hitting harder." There are additional hurdles for a health reporter in Malawi, such as low literacy rates, a lack of a national health infrastructure, and cultural biases against Western medicine, he said.
Albrecht has the relative luxury of spending a week or more researching and writing analytical stories (amid his editing and managing duties) for the highly educated readers of Germany's weekly national newspaper, Die Zeit.
"The problem I have is that, after extensive research and a one-foot pile of paper, I need to figure out what to do with it," said Albrecht, who has been a media consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO). "I really want to come up with some new, interesting intellectual twist or idea."
In establishing the fellowships, the Nieman Foundation worked closely with the Center for Health Communication at HSPH, headed by Jay Winsten. The Center's Deputy Director, Susan Moses, directs the fellowship program at the School.
She said, "The fellowships aim to provide selected seasoned journalists with the opportunity to gain additional knowledge, skills, and tools to delve deeply into global health issues and boost the quantity and quality of stories when they return to their jobs."
Some memorable moments for the fellows so far include insights into WHO by Jim Yong Kim, a former director of WHO's HIV/AIDS unit and new director of the Franúois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at HSPH. Also of interest was a class taught by Christopher Murray, director of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, who encouraged a healthy skepticism of data sources.
"Even in my own country, I don't know where the data is coming from," said Munthali.
The fellows share a common interest in why some aid to countries seems to be beneficial and other aid does not. Malawi, said Munthali, has well-regarded plans for tackling the country's major health problems and is well-rated by the World Bank and leaders in the global health aid community. Yet, he noted, 600 out of every 100,000 mothers still die in childbirth; tuberculosis drugs are stolen and sold in the streets as cures for sexually transmitted diseases; and in his view, a disproportionate amount of resources are devoted to HIV/AIDS when the accuracy of the supporting data can be questioned.
Albrecht is interested in the subject of developing health policies at a global level that accommodate voices at the local level; why the same amount of funding can succeed one place and fail elsewhere; and why most policies fail to make a lasting impact.
Kohn wants to know what strategies are working and why.
"The fellows are both storytellers and watchdogs," said Stefanie Friedhoff, Nieman special projects manager, who advises the fellows during their work at Harvard. "They have to identify successful projects or approaches and tell the stories behind them, as well as identify and investigate failures that are not being reported. The biggest challenge to me is that they are doing so in a field that so far has not been penetrated by a lot of good journalism. You don't build a career on global health reporting. This is part of what we would like to change with this fellowship."
The fellows have been at HSPH since September and will remain here until May. They are considered part of a larger 2007 class of Nieman Fellows who spend a year at Harvard, pursuing areas of interest to them. Unlike their 25 Cambridge-based colleagues, who will return directly to their former jobs at the end of the academic year, the global health fellows will put their specialized knowledge to immediate use in four months of journalistic field work in a developing country.
"The field work is intended to provide an intensive learning and reporting experience in countries experiencing the most pressing issues in global health," said Moses. "At the conclusion of their field work, the fellows will be expected to produce work based on this experience and their academic studies. This work could be stories, a case study, or a handbook of best practices related to reporting on health in a developing country."
Said Friedhoff, "They have to do both the intellectual and field work to tell the essential stories, the stories that define global health in the 21st century, the stories that make us all understand why global health is a subject of concern to everyone, and the stories that define the term 'health globalization' much more than global health. Indeed, why is the term 'global health' so far more a synonym for diseases in the developing world than a balanced look at health issues around the globe?"
Applications are now being accepted for the next class of Nieman Fellows in Global Health Reporting. Applications must be postmarked on or before January 31, 2007.
—CCM
Copyright, 2007, President and Fellows of Harvard College
