Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Engagement Journalism In Action: Supporting New Yorkers With Long Covid, Sarah Luft

Capstones

What do asthma and long COVID have in common? 1 in 13 U.S. adults are living with them. This report is a recap of my efforts to address the information needs of New Yorkers with long COVID as a student in CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism engagement program. For my final project, I partnered with THE CITY, a nonprofit news outlet serving New Yorkers, to expand the MISSING THEM project. The report details the what, why, and how of my engagement reporting process, including a community engagement framework, a service journalism series, and lessons to carry forward. You …

Chosen Family: One Woman’S Fight To Become Her Best Friend’S Next Of Kin, Yessenia M. Moreno

Capstones

Nearly 70,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the state of New York. For the queer community, this time of death and mourning has highlighted how complicated things can get at the end of someone’s life.

This audio documentary, “Chosen Family, ”is the story of one woman’s fight to overcome the legal system and become her best friend’s health care proxy in the final battle of his life .

Link to capstone project: https://medium.com/@yessimoreno/7b3d96691b9f

Hips That Harm: When Medical Devices Fail Women, Sophie N. Putka

Capstones

Medical devices that save the lives of thousands of Americans each year advance at a rapid pace - but some of them consistently leave women behind. When it comes to joint replacements and even heart devices, women have worse health outcomes. Behind this preventable problem is a system that overlooks women from start to finish. Female bodies are different from male bodies, but women are often underrepresented in medical trials for device approval. Women’s participation in clinical testing for devices has increased, but there’s rarely a detailed analysis of performance by sex, and even less information on women by race …

The Case For Not Giving Birth, Amanda D'Ambrosio

Capstones

Racism in medicine and a broken healthcare system has led to a maternal mortality crisis in the United States, one that disproportionately harms Black mothers. Though lawmakers and medical professionals have introduced legislation to expand healthcare and combat discrimination in clinical settings, reproductive justice leaders encourage new mothers to lean on their communities as a solution to the crisis.

Insured And In Debt, Virginia Jeffries

Capstones

Many Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance are still going into debt to pay medical bills.

http://virginia-jeffries.com/cap/

Postpartum Pains, Lakea Youngblood

Capstones

The Academy once again came under fire. This time for banning a commercial that advertised a postpartum support. People all over the country became enraged. The Academy seemed more friendly to movies about murder than postpartum, in alignment with the sexist ideas that have been pervasive in this country since its foundations. This short documentary pushes back against this narrative and the silence around postpartum by showing the realities of it through a woman’s journey.

The film is a personal documentary about myself. After having my first child, I found myself traumatized and scarred by the pains of postpartum. Because …

A Modern-Day Affliction: Did Wifi Make Joel Dean Sick?, Dominic Mckenzie

Capstones

Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity is one of many disorders that exist in a strange border zone between recognized syndromes and discredited ones. One young man, a computer engineer by trade, had his life turned upside down by the disorder that has doctors and scientists across the world confused on how to treat it. Here's his story:

https://medium.com/@dominic.mckenzie/capstone-1dd7ff866a29

Sleep Paralysis: Dreams, Demons And Rem-Atonia, Joshua G. Christensen

Capstones

Have you ever woken up from a dream only to find you can’t move? You’re paralyzed and, sometimes, you are even having vivid hallucinations. It’s terrifying, but harmless and very common. Regardless of it being so innocuous, Sleep Paralysis has inspired fear for centuries and many still believe it to be a supernatural phenomenon. This is, most likely, because most people who get Sleep Paralysis, don’t really know what it is. People just like me.

https://medium.com/@joshua.christensen/sleep-paralysis-dreams-demons-and-rem-atonia-27f46c2748cf

Well-Born: Black Women And The Infertility Crisis No One Is Talking About, Kaara Baptiste

Capstones

Black women are twice as likely to experience infertility than white women, but are less likely to seek treatment or to have successful fertility results once treated. Despite this alarming number, this topic is not often discussed, even among the black community. My narrative piece t tells the story of a black woman confronting her infertility diagnosis and the role her race played in her fertility treatment, while exploring the role racism and sexuality have had in keeping this issue in the shadows.

Urgent Cares Outpace Health Policy In The U.S., Ashley Rodriguez

Capstones

More and more medical practices across the country are rebranding themselves as urgent care centers to meet the growing demand for fast, affordable health care. In many states, they are regulated like physicians groups. However, there is a debate brewing among health care policy experts and government officials over whether these centers should have their own regulations. Such oversight could help patients expecting acute care avoid confusion to such a degree that they receive poor treatment from professionals who aren’t prepared to offer emergency services, or delayed treatment because they are bounced around from facility to facility.