Participants at the SABEW health care symposium at AIER take a moment out to pose for a picture outside the E.C. Harwood Library. Pictured from left, Marcia Stamell, AIER book editor; Ken Alltucker, Arizona Republic; Richard Eisenberg, PBS’s Nextavenue; Giles Bruce, The Times of Northwest Indiana; Elizabeth O’Brien, MarketWatch; Doug Whiteman, Bankrate.com; conference organizer Marty Steffens, SABEW Chair in Business and Financial Journalism, University of Missouri; Dianne Finch, visiting professor, Elon University; Gail DeGeorge, independent journalist; Glenn Howat, Minneapolis StarTribune; Dorianne Perrucci, independent journalist; Samantha Liss, St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Elizabeth Hayes, Portland (Oregon) Business Journal; Tracy Cook, University of Missouri; Daniel Chang, Miami Herald; Christine Giordano, independent journalist, Leia Parker, Silicon Valley Business Journal, and Holly Fletcher, The Tennessean.
Expanding our outreach to financial and economic journalists, AIER recently hosted the 2015 symposium on health care economics, sponsored by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. The three-day event took place on our beautiful, historic Western Massachusetts campus from November 8 to 10 and brought together health care reporters with distinguished researchers and academics.
For the past several years, SABEW has held annual conferences on health care. This year’s event at AIER included reporters from the Miami Herald, The Arizona Republic, and the Minneapolis StarTribune MarketWatch, Bankrate.com, PBS Nextavenue, and other news outlets.
Besides attending the formal presentations, the experts in health care coverage and financial reporting met informally with each other and with AIER researchers about areas of mutual concern and complementary expertise. AIER’s quiet country setting helped foster engaged conversations among the passionate and committed group of journalists.
Stephen Adams, AIER’s president, was among the featured presenters. He spoke to conference attendees about the Institute’s research on health care—most notably the 2014 Research Study on the Affordable Care Act. The AIER study explained how the Affordable Care Act would affect insurance premiums of people in different health insurance markets.
The 2015 SABEW symposium was sponsored by The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation with offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., dedicated to the promotion of a high-performing health care system.
SABEW is the second journalistic group in recent years to come to AIER for professional workshops. Since 2009, the Knight-Bagehot Fellows in Economics and Business Journalism culminate their year’s studies at Columbia University with lectures on our campus from AIER researchers. AIER also publishes (and helps pick) the winning essay of the Women’s Economic Round Table’s Business Journalism prize, a contest open exclusively to current and former Knight-Bagehot Fellows.
In addition, earlier this year, AIER Researcher Luke Delorme gave a presentation to a third group of business journalists as part of a retirement workshop put together by the National Press Foundation, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.
