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Kate Ruddon
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CDC Foundation Announces 2001 Class of Knight Journalism Fellows at CDC
April 10, 2001, ATLANTA - Six experienced health/science journalists have been selected to come to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta this summer to study epidemiology and public health.
Recipients of the CDC Foundation’s Knight Journalism Fellowships at CDC for 2001 are:
- Paula Andalo, health editor for Argentina’s largest newspaper, Clarin, in Buenos Aires and host of a weekly radio show “The Medical Kit”
- Cary Barbor, a freelance health writer and editor for ReadersDigest.com, CBS HealthWatch, and fitness magazines. She is based in New York City
- Katherine Dougan, health reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, MS
- Barbara Isaacs, consumer health features writer for The Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader
- Shantell Kirkendoll, health reporter for The Flint (MI) Journal
- John Pope, medical/health reporter for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans*
During the four-month fellowship, which begins June 28, fellows will participate in an intensive biostatistics and epidemiology training course alongside members of the 2001 class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), CDC’s “disease detectives.” Following the course, they will spend two months working with a team of CDC scientists, conducting research on a topic of their choice and investigating an outbreak with EIS officers. The final month of the fellowship will be spent at a state or local health department to gain exposure to public health delivery at the grass-roots level.
This fellowship program is a pilot project made possible through a three-year grant to the CDC Foundation from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami. The purpose of the program is to encourage better reporting on public health issues.
Knight Journalism Fellows at CDC for 2001
- Paula Andalo
- Paula Andalo, who is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is health editor of one of the largest newspapers in the Americas, Clarin, with an estimated 1.25 million readers. She also hosts a weekly radio interview show called “The Medical Kit” and has five years of experience in television production. For the past eight years, she has concentrated on health topics, as writer, editor and broadcaster. At Clarin, she has specialized in HIV and covered the International AIDS Conferences in South Africa, Switzerland and the U.S. The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases commissioned her to write a Spanish version of information for participants in the Esprit trial of Interleukin-2 for HIV-infected persons.
- Cary Barbor
- Cary Barbor, a freelance writer who lives in New York City, is a health writer and editor for both new and old media, including ReadersDigest.com, CBS HeatlhWatch, and fitness magazines. One subject she hopes to pursue while at CDC is the trend toward obesity in the United States. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English, winning the book award for the outstanding master’s thesis (on the work of Toni Morrison) at the University of Massachusetts in 1989. Ms. Barbor also is a trained massage therapist and has used that skill in volunteer work in an AIDS hospice. She is also a short story writer and a tennis player.
- Katherine R. Dougan
- Katherine Dougan, health reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, MS, was a news reporter, editor and graphics specialist at several newspapers in her native Midwest before coming to the South in 1998. At The Anniston (AL) Star, Ms. Dougan won a state award for her environmental reporting, and she completed a thorough series on PCB contamination in March 2000. Her undergraduate degree is in print journalism, and her master’s studies were in English and creative writing.
- Barbara Isaacs
- The health features writer for most of her 11 years at The Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader, Barbara Isaacs has become “Dr. Barb” to her colleagues. She writes heartstring-tuggers about children with rare diseases, follows restaurant inspectors and sex educators on their rounds, and tells consumers how to stock their medicine chests. To make a story on blood donation more interesting, she followed blood-processing from her own arm to its infusion into a 62-year-old tobacco farmer. Her degree is in journalism, but she has also taken an eight-week mini-medicine course at the University of Kentucky. She is a longtime rape crisis volunteer.
- Shantell Kirkendoll
- With 10 years of experience in journalism, Shantell Kirkendoll is the health reporter for The Flint (MI) Journal. A former education writer, she switched to medicine three years ago, getting a head start by attending a health-writing seminar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. She covers both news and features - from a long-running nurses’ strike to the difficulties of caring for ailing parents and the intricacies of brain surgery in Parkinson’s disease. Her particular interest - and the subject she hopes to learn more about while at CDC - is racial disparities in infant mortality. Her degree is in mass communications, and she serves as a counselor at a camp for grieving children.
- John Pope
- John Pope has been medical/health reporter for The New Orleans Times-Picayune since 1986. He has reported extensively on AIDS and other communicable diseases, vibrio vulnificus and other foodborne illnesses, an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in New Orleans, the need for organ donors, and much more. He attended a public health short course at the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland in 1999. Mr. Pope’s undergraduate degree is in mathematics and his master’s is in history.
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