Mannat Singh recently graduated with a master's in public administration from the University of Colorado, Denver, School of Public Affairs. Her interests are in public will and advocacy, and how they can promote new and innovative health policies. Singh is attending the Symposium as part of its Symposium University program.
Initially, this blog entry was going to focus on the Discovery Session "An Uneasy Alliance: Health Care and the Media" but I cannot help but first touch on the inspirational morning session we had, even though I can't possibly do it justice.
This morning, Kelly Brownell, co-founder and director for the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc., Larry Cohen, founder and executive director for the Prevention Institute, and Pedro Jose Greer Jr., MD, assistant dean for Academic Affairs of the Florida International University School of Medicine, together captivated a massive hall full of health professionals, who all wanted to understand "The View from the Street." Watching these phenomenal leaders was an experienced unmatched to any other. The roles they have taken upon themselves, the passion they have for their causes, and the unendingly positive, optimistic, and encouraging attitudes with which they carry out their work is something to aspire to. You could literally feel a growing buzz of excitement and ideas in the room as these presenters shared their experiences.
After the morning session and a lunch break, I headed for the Discovery Session on "Health Care and the Media." In attendance were Michael Booth from The Denver Post, Diane Carman from the School of Public Affairs and the University of Colorado Denver (my campus!), Cynthia Hessin from Rocky Mountain PBS, Andis Robeznieks from Modern Healthcare, Eric Whitney for Colorado Public Radio and Tim Wieland of CBS4 Denver. The facilitator for this discussion was the great T.R. Reid, who also participated in the exciting interactive debate last night.
Themes included: The importance of trust and reliability in reporting; the development of a fan based on that trust and loyalty; the inability to separate the politics out of content when discussing health care in the news arena; the tendency of reporters to turn back to politics (because it is harder to get to the "nitty-gritty" of the actual policy issue than to discuss the politics surrounding the issue); the dramatically changing landscape of media; and the problem with American objectivism (that the objective culture in journalism is effectively watering down opinions - my attempt to paraphrase a somewhat controversial issue), and "if it bleeds it leads."
In the end, I saw the "uneasy alliance" as an issue of dependency. Individuals need a news outlet that discusses health policy issues, and news outlets need experts who can accurately cover issues of health policy. Those experts need to be able to effectively reach their audience (the public), and in order to do so health policy needs to be broken down into understandable terms. What can be lost in translation can also be lost in politics, and because individuals rely on the media for health policy issues this is effectively their only source of information. This increases the importance of accuracy in reporting but also ease of understanding. As I see it and reflected upon it, it becomes a loop of potential for miscommunication - making all the panelists' roles all the more crucial.
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