April 3, 2003
Roundtable on media and disease prevention at HSC Monday, April 14
UW faculty and representatives of the media will gather from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. on Monday, April 14, to talk about the challenges they face in communicating disease prevention research to the public. The free forum will be in room T-639 of the Health Sciences Center.
The discussion will include Dr. Eduardo Simoes, director of the Prevention Research Centers Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, who will deliver a keynote talk. The audience will also hear about the results of a poll into the attitudes of Washington state residents about disease prevention research. Speakers will include Mary Woolley, president of Research!America and Dean Patricia Wahl of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
Attendees will learn concrete ways that researchers can work cooperatively with reporters. Roundtable participants will identify the different challenges that researchers and members of the media face as they seek to share information about disease prevention research with the public, and talk about ways to work around those barriers. The roundtable moderator is Jim Hartz, former co-host of NBC’s Today Show. Participants will include researchers from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine as well as representatives from The Seattle Times and other media outlets.
The event is sponsored by the UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine and Research!America’s Prevention Research Initiative.
The roundtable format is modeled after the national science-media roundtables that formed the basis of the First Amendment Center’s 1998 report “Worlds Apart: How the Distance Between Science and Journalism Threatens America’s Future.”
