Virtual registration is open for Thursday's conference on health journalism in rural areas; registration is $50 tops

Want to attend the Rural Health Journalism Workshop 2022 on Thursday, July 14, but can't make it to Chattanooga? Not to worry: Virtual attendance is available, and registration is now open. The one-day conference is free for (and only open to) members of the Association of Health Care Journalists. Membership is usually $60 a year, but AHCJ will knock $10 off if you use the code RURAL22 when you register.

From the workshop website: "This workshop will bring journalists together with health care and policy experts who focus on the medical challenges of rural areas. Leave with a better understanding of what’s happening – or will be happening – in rural regions, and return to work with dozens of story ideas you can pursue. You don't have to live in a rural area to write great stories about what's happening just beyond the city limits. And think about how much policy is set based on the non-urban population of your state. This special one-day, no-fee workshop will help you find and cover health stories in rural America."

Sessions will cover data resources for reporters, rural health-care resource inequality during the pandemic, the promise and limitations of rural telemedicine, mobile clinics and other creative approaches to bridging rural health-care gaps, how to ask the right questions about opioid settlement money, and how to boost the number of rural doctors and nurses by establishing health-care pipelines in schools. Click here for more information about each session as well as a full list of panelists.

The conference is hosted by the University of Tennessee's Health Science Center, Cempa Community Care and Erlanger Health System, and is sponsored by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and The Commonwealth Fund.