Health & Science News

About this course

Health reporting carries a weight that few other beats can match, because readers act on what they read: they take medications, vaccinate their children, and change their habits based on your stories. This classroom prepares you for that responsibility. You start with the skills that let you evaluate research honestly, from reading the methods of a scientific study to weighing numbers like sample size and confidence intervals. You then learn the professional habits of medical coverage, including embargoes, verification, privacy, and how to report on vaccines and treatments in proportion. The second half turns to people and language: interviewing patients and experts with empathy and precision, responding to health misinformation without amplifying it, and explaining uncertainty in words readers can act on. You finish with a practical toolkit you can apply to any health story, from a clinical trial announcement to a viral cure claim.

Course outline