Comprehensive news coverage of health policy and public health issues in California is essential for a range of audiences — health officials and decisionmakers at the community, county, and state levels, as well as residents seeking critical information on matters that impact their lives. Given that California has played a trend-setting role in health-related issues, as it has in so many other domains, its experience is also relevant to stakeholders elsewhere.
“If California does it, it will probably happen elsewhere.”
— Victoria Colliver, former San Francisco Chronicle health reporter
Such comprehensive coverage, whether produced for local, statewide, or national audiences, depends on a robust health care journalism ecosystem with the ability and capacity to follow daily news as well as to pursue in-depth stories and investigations. The dramatic changes in the media ecosystem over the last decade have created challenges for news organizations in fulfilling these obligations. CHCF commissioned this report to provide an overview of the state’s current health reporting landscape.
Authors & Contributors
David Tuller
David Tuller, DrPH, is a senior fellow in public health and journalism at UC Berkeley’s Center for Global Public Health. He was a reporter and editor for 10 years at the San Francisco Chronicle and has written regularly about public health and medical issues for the New York Times, the policy journal Health Affairs, and many other publications. He was a coauthor of the 2020 CHCF publication The State of Health Journalism in California, an overview of the state’s health care journalism landscape.
Heather Tirado Gilligan
Heather Tirado Gilligan is a journalist who has written for publications including Slate, The Nation, CNN, and the Washington Post. Previously, she was executive editor of the California Health Report, a news nonprofit covering disparities in health and access to health care. Heather received a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley and a PhD in English from Rutgers University, where she studied race in American culture.
