Rural weekly writer, larger-media colleagues picked for 9-day health fellowship in Boston area

A reporter for a thrice-weekly newspaper in southeastern Kentucky is among 11 medical journalists chosen for a prestigious fellowship that will take them to the Boston area this spring to study health care and how to cover it.

Tara Kaprowy, right, of The Sentinel-Echo in London was chosen for The Health Coverage Fellowship with the support of her employer and its owner, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., and of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.

"The fellowship, the first of its kind in the country, is designed to help the media do a better job covering critical health care issues. It does that by bringing in as speakers more than 50 top health officials, policy people, and researchers. It also brings the fellows out to watch first-hand how the system works," says a news release from Babson College. The fellowship is housed at the college's Center for Executive Education in Wellesley and is directed by Larry Tye, former health and environment reporter at The Boston Globe and author of five books.

The eight-year-old program is sponsored by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, with help from the Maine Health Access Foundation, New Hampshire’s Endowment for Health, Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, and the Texas-based Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. The contributions from outlying states helped create slots for reporters from those states.

Joining Kaprowy will be Robert Weisman of the Globe, Cathy Corman of WGBH Radio in Boston, Shawn Cunningham of WAGM-TV in Maine, Jennifer Huberdeau of the North Adams (Mass.) Transcript, Cynthia McCormick of the Cape Cod Times, Karen Nugent of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Denis Paiste of the New Hampshire Union Leader, Jason Roberson of the Dallas Morning News, Kathryn Tolbert of The Washington Post, Laura Ungar of The Courier-Journal of Louisville.