SAN FRANCISCO - Baltimore, MD -- The Pew Health Professions Commission, led by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, today honored outstanding journalists from five media organizations whose work has helped to increase the public's understanding of primary health care.

Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, former director of the U.S. Health Resources Services Administration's Bureau of Health Professions, presented the prestigious 1998 Primary Care Achievement Awards at the Primary Care Education for the 21st Century: Lessons from National Initiatives meeting, held in Baltimore. The Primary Care Awards program is funded by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the Center for the Health Professions at the University of California, San Francisco. The awards, which carry a $2,500 prize, are given in recognition of news or feature writing and broadcast journalism that contributes to heightened public awareness and understanding of primary care practice, education and research.

"Journalists are vital to instilling in people an appreciation for primary care and its practitioners," Mitchell said. "With these awards we honor extraordinary journalists who have taken it upon themselves to inform the public about the workings of our health care system and the field of primary care that drives it."

The recipients of the 1998 Primary Care Journalism Awards are:

Local Broadcast

Christine Mattingly, Jim Kenyon and Greg Woodman of WSTM-TVin Syracuse, New York - Dying for Help WSTM-TV3 (transcript)

National Broadcast

Gina Greene and Rhonda Rowland of CNN Medical News - Heroes of Medicine (transcript)

Large Newspaper

Karen Garloch of The Charlotte Observer - The Making of a Doctor
Stephanie Simon of The Los Angeles Times

Small Newspaper

Karen Andreas, Kelley Bouchard and Mary Pratt of Salem Evening News - Surviving Managed Care

An Honorable Mention goes to Larry Mitchell of the Chico Enterprise-Record in California for his series "The HMOs are Coming," which profiled primary care physicians in his community who are struggling under HMOs to provide quality care to their patients.

The Center for the Health Professions at the University of California, San Francisco is a national center committed to changing the health care workforce. The Center assists health care professionals, health professions schools, care delivery organizations and public policy makers in responding to the challenges of educating and managing a health care workforce capable of improving the health and well being of people and their communities.

The Pew Health Professions Commission, a program of the Center, works to assist policy makers and education institutions produce health care professionals who meet the changing needs of the American health care system.

The Pew Charitable Trusts support non-profit activities in the areas of culture, education, the environment, health and human services, public policy and religion. Based in Philadelphia, the Trusts make strategic investments that encourage and support citizen participation in addressing critical issues and effecting social change. In 1997, with more that $4.5 billion in assets, the Trusts awarded $181 million to 320 non-profit organizations.

Christine Mattingly, Jim Kenyon and Greg Woodman of WSTM-TV in Syracuse, New York, profiled a seven-year-old boy with cystic fibrosis who has become an uninsured victim in the rush to overhaul welfare. The three-part series "Dying for Help," produced by this team of reporters, examined the federal policy responsible for the boy's new found plight, and spotlighted the need for regulators to recognize the benefits of preventative medicine for cystic fibrosis and other disabling diseases.

Gina Greene and Rhonda Rowland of CNN profiled – in a "Heroes of Medicine" segment – two women who pioneered a solution to the rural health crisis in Kansas by training an army of nurse practitioners in their own communities via the Internet and virtual classrooms. This program of bringing "the classroom to the prairie" has educated 250 nurse practitioners, 157 of whom have chosen to practice in Kansas.

In her series "Making of a Doctor," The Charlotte Observer's Karen Garloch exposed the pivotal role that medical residency programs for family physicians play in shaping future doctors. Garloch profiled one medical resident in North Carolina as he successfully completed his grueling first year of a three-year residency. Garloch spent several days each month over the course of a year on the series, which received appreciation from readers for its honest and insightful portrayal of a doctor-in-training.

Stephanie Simon of The Los Angeles Times reported on the significant number of children in California who lack health insurance coverage, and the anguish that parents feel when they cannot provide primary health care for their children. The two-part investigative series – "No Health Insurance: A Parent's Nightmare" – profiled several children who lack but desperately need health insurance, and profiled several programs that provide health care for uninsured children.

Karen Andreas, Kelley Bouchard and Mary Pratt of the The Salem Evening News in Massachusetts published a three-part series, edited by Karen Andreas, that served as a managed care guidebook, detailing for readers everything from how to choose a primary care doctor to how to successfully resolve disputes with an HMO. The goal of this ambitious series, "Surviving Managed Care," was to give readers the information they need to make the best decisions about getting treatment in today's system of health care.