UC Berkeley journalism and public health schools launch joint event series on health care costs

With generous support from the Kaiser Permanente National Community Benefit Fund, the spring series will kick off on Tuesday, Feb. 10, with “Food Politics in the Age of Health Care Reform,” a conversation with acclaimed food scholar Marion Nestle about the harmful impact of food marketing on nutrition and health costs and what food advocates are doing about it.

Nestle has authored several influential books on nutrition and food marketing, including “Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health,” and runs a popular blog of the same name. She earned her PhD and MPH from UC Berkeley before working as a senior nutrition policy advisor for the Department of Health and Human Services in the 1980’s. She is now the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. Forbes named Nestle one of the world’s most powerful foodies in 2011, preceded only by Michelle Obama. She is one of several prominent writers and public health professionals scheduled to appear in the event series.

“The line-up of speakers and topics for the lecture series is very timely because health care is increasingly unaffordable to individuals and families, employers, and government,” said Brian Raymond, senior health policy consultant at the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy.åÊ”We believe the J-School can have a significant impact on public understanding about health care costs and affordability by providing this forum for dialogue.”

From Ebola outbreaks to the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act, health-related issues increasingly dominate the headlines. Thanks in part to support from Kaiser Permanente, coverage of health-related issues remains a bedrock of news reporting at the J-School. For several years, Kaiser has sponsored fellowships that enable journalism students to pursue health policy masters projects.

In addition to advanced reporting classes specifically geared toward in-depth health coverage, the J-School offers a unique joint degree program that allows students to earn both master’s in journalism and master’s in public health degrees simultaneously. In partnership with Berkeley’s Center for Global Public Health, the J-School also offers summer fellowships for Public Health and Journalism students pursuing reporting projects related to health issues in poor and middle-income countries. That program is supported by the California Wellness Foundation.

The new event series is the latest development in the J-School’s expansion of its health reporting program and its partnership with the School of Public Health. The two schools are dedicated to providing a public platform for rigorous debate and engaging conversation about the changing landscape of health care and media coverage of the issues. The California Wellness Foundation and Berkeley Wellness are also providing support for the events.

“It’s been terrific to have Kaiser’s support for our students for the last half-dozen or so years, and I’m delighted that this year we’ve been able to expand the program to include a series of talks and panel discussions,” said Dr. David Tuller, who coordinates the joint MPH/MJ degree program. “That allows us to broaden the discussion of these important social issues to include not only the Berkeley campus but the rest of the Bay Area community and the country.” The conversation with Marion Nestle, which begins Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 7 p.m. in the Banatao Auditorium of Sutardja Dai Hall, inaugurates the spring series of four events and will be available for live stream via this link. Video from the event will also be posted to the J-School website in the coming weeks.

The first event last fall, just ahead of the November election, was a panel debate on sugar taxes and the costs of obesity, which brought together Dean Stefano Bertozzi of the School of Public Health with Berkeley City Councilmember Laurie Capitelli and other public health experts. The series will continue in March with a panel on the costs of the new hepatitis C medications; among the panelists will be MPH/MJ student Niema Jordan, who is working on her masters documentary about the issue, among other guests. In April, there will be a panel on the health care and societal costs of the antibiotics crisis, with best-selling author and J-School professor Michael Pollan; science reporter Maryn McKenna, who is writing a book on the history of antibiotics use in livestock production; and Berkeley infectious disease professor Lee Riley, who has studied the links between antibiotics in livestock and human obesity. The last event, in May, will be a conversation with Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, a cardiologist, author of two books about practicing medicine, and frequent New York Times columnist.