Faculty, guest lecturers and student bios COURSES
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Entering class of:
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Carrie Gann
Carrie Gann earned her undergraduate degree from Emory University in 2006, double-majoring in neuroscience/behavioral biology and journalism. After a few years of study, she realized that she did not want to be a doctor, liked science and loved writing. She got a job covering science and medicine for The Sunday Paper, a weekly local newspaper in Atlanta. She was also the editor of an on-campus magazine at Emory.
Before entering the medical and science journalism program at UNC, Gann worked as an editorial assistant for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Washington, D.C. At ASCO, she wrote for the membership magazine, worked on the Web site and edited a portion of the scientific manuscripts presented at the society’s annual meeting. She hopes to use her years at Carolina to branch outside print journalism and explore other forms of media.
Anne Johnson
Anne Johnson has a B.A. in biology from Smith College. Before coming to Carolina, she worked for four years at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. There, she translated committee-authored National Research Council reports into briefs, booklets, Web sites and posters for lay audiences, discovering along the way a great passion for writing about science.
Previously, Johnson nourished her love of the natural world through work and volunteer experiences at a marine reserve in New Zealand, a sea turtle conservation project in Costa Rica, and small farms in the United States and abroad. She hopes to combine her background in biology with the training that she is receiving in the Medical and Science Journalism Program at UNC to develop a career in science communications.
Niveditha Ravi
Niveditha Ravi earned an undergraduate degree in Electronic Media from the University of Madras (India) in 2005. She specialized in broadcast journalism at the Asian College of Journalism in India where she also took a science writing elective. In May 2006, she joined Reuters (India) as an Equities Correspondent and reported on U.S.-based health care and pharmaceutical companies.
Tracking the health care sector for two years at Reuters increased her interest in writing about medicine and science. Ravi is also trained in video and audio production and is looking forward to improving those skills through the Medical & Science Journalism Program. She hopes to have a career creating science documentaries. Ravi is also interested in business reporting and writing about international health issues.
Jeff Yeo
Jeff Yeo received a B.A. in biology in 2008 from the University of Michigan. Yeo spent all of his undergraduate years working for WOLV — Michigan's only student-run television station — and worked various stints as videographer, editor, director, writer or producer for shows in sports, news and entertainment.
After realizing he's not cut out for a career in science or medicine, Yeo switched paths to explore his dichotomous interests in science and the media at UNC. Yeo plans to make medical and environmental documentaries and study how the media have influenced the public's understanding of science through what he considers sensationalized and unbalanced reporting.
Prashant Nair
Prashant Nair is a senior editorial coordinator at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Signed into existence by President Lincoln in 1863, the National Academies are today comprised of four organizations that advise the federal government and the public on matters related to science, engineering and medicine. One of the world’s most-cited scientific journals, PNAS publishes research articles, commentaries, reviews and perspectives on a raft of topics.
Nair was a Pfizer Minority Medical Journalism Scholar and graduated from the medical journalism program in May 2009. His writing has appeared in a range of publications, including Nature Medicine, New Scientist, Science and local newspapers and magazines in Chapel Hill. During the summer of 2008, Nair was a science writing intern at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of Harvard University, Boston, Mass. He also completed a health reporting internship with North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC in Durham, N.C.
In addition to a Master of Arts degree in medical journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Nair holds a Master of Sciences degree in life sciences from Bharathidasan University, India, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland.
Nair’s published articles:
'Walk again' drugs to be tested on people
Cocaine-triggered brain changes reversed in rodents
Mind Reading Is Child's Play (subscription required)
Ban the Sweets, Stop the Shakes (subscription required)
Julia Connors Soplop
Julia Connors Soplop was a Roy H. Park Fellow and graduated from the Medical Journalism Program at UNC in May 2008.
Soplop is now a marketing specialist for RTI International, where she develops marketing materials and feature articles, conducts market research and coordinates journal publications for the organization's international development group. Her work focuses on international health, particularly in Africa.
A Minnesota native, Soplop received her B.A. in French studies in 2004 from Duke University. She has held internships at National Geographic, Duke Magazine and the Summit Daily News, and her writing and photos have appeared in several other publications, including Skiing Magazine and The Chapel Hill News.
Soplop also holds an interest in environmental issues and animal behavior. She has conducted primate behavioral research in Madagascar and studied sea turtle conservation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
Soplop moved to Chapel Hill after spending two years in New York City working for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, where she managed grants, wrote features on grantee organizations and photographed Komen's New York City Race for the Cure.
At UNC, Soplop focused on maternal and child health, writing her master's thesis on the medical and ethical issues surrounding preterm birth and low birth weight.
Maggie De Pano
Maggie De Pano currently works as a communications specialist at the Duke University Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C., an academic research organization dedicated to developing and sharing knowledge that improves the care of patients around the world through innovative clinical research. As part of the web services team, she provides a variety of writing, editing, design and Web site maintenance functions for enterprise, scientific and community audiences.
De Pano graduated in May 2008 from the Medical Journalism Program. She was the third recipient of the Pfizer Minority Medical Journalism Scholarship and the first international student to enter the program.
A native of the Philippines, De Pano received her bachelor's degree in Communications Technology Management from Ateneo de Manila University in 2001. She has held writing and communications planning jobs at Macare Medicals, the exclusive distributor of Johnson & Johnson Orthoclinical Diagnostics in the Philippines; Ayala Life Assurance, a leading life and health insurance provider; BusinessWorld Online, a business newspaper; and various publications where she freelanced for more than eight years.
De Pano holds a special interest in public health issues involving women, minorities and the mentally ill. In 2004, a piece she wrote on cervical cancer incidence among Filipinos earned her a travel grant from the Australian Embassy, which sent her on a trip to Sydney so she could learn more about developments in the field of women's health.
Kelly Rae Chi
Kelly Rae Chi is a freelance science and technology journalist whose writing has appeared in Scientific American, The Scientist, Nature Methods and other publications.
She was a Roy H. Park Fellow and graduated from the medical journalism program in May 2008. Her master’s thesis explored the psychology of the simple living movement.
In her first year in the program, Kelly was science writing fellow with the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center. At the planetarium, she wrote and edited text for a new science exhibit for children, called "Zoom In," about the size of science from cells to space. In the summer of 2007 after her first year in the program, she was a reporting intern with The Scientist, a life sciences trade magazine based in Philadelphia.
Kelly received a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology and physiology from Purdue University in 2003. At Purdue, she worked in a research lab where she helped develop new methods to assess feeding behavior in mice.
After graduation from Purdue, Kelly attended graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she received a master’s degree in biology. Her master’s project examined the brain’s role in detecting hypoglycemia in rats. While at Illinois, she began writing for the student-run newspaper, The Daily Illini, and discovered her passion to write about science.
Kelly resides in Garner, N.C., with her husband and three cats.
Chi's published articles:
“Experimental Prosthetic Surgery to Help One Dog Get a Leg Up,” Scientific American, August 2008
“The Year of Sequencing,” special feature in Nature Methods, January 2008
“Experts Slam NIH Study on Chelation Therapy,” Simons Foundation Web site, July 2008
"Zoom In," Morehead Planetarium
Sarah Whitmarsh
Sarah Whitmarsh graduated from the medical journalism program in May 2008. As a Roy H. Park fellow, Sarah worked with assistant professors Heidi Hennink-Kaminski and Elizabeth Dougall on qualitative and quantitative content analyses of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) as part of a social marketing campaign to reduce the incidence of SBS in North Carolina. She also wrote for Endeavors magazine and The Chapel Hill Herald.
After graduation, Sarah moved to London to work at the FIP Collaborating Centre. The FIP CC is a specialized research center associated with the School of Pharmacy, University of London and the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) in The Hague, Netherlands. The FIP Collaborating Centre works to improve pharmacy education and development in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sarah writes communication materials, plans events and edits research studies and reports for the Centre.
A native of Savannah, Ga., Sarah attended the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, where she received her Bachelor's of Science in Microbiology in May 2006. She wrote her thesis on prescription drug policy and addiction.
Whitmarsh's published articles:
Pharmacy Education Taskforce, FIP
Bragg's Butterflies: Where the troops train, a student tracks wildlife on the move
The Mouse Mess: Have we bred some of the medical value out of lab mice?
Molly Davis
Molly Davis was a Roy H. Park Fellow who received her master's degree from the medical journalism program in May 2007.
In December 2003, Molly received her B.S. through an interdisciplinary program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Her depth study was Scientific Writing and Philosophy of Science. Her degree combined the core biology coursework with additional emphases on environmental science, the philosophy of science, bioethics and non-fiction writing.
In order to broaden her experience in environmental policy and research, she traveled extensively between semesters. In Australia, she lived at a field station in the rainforest, where she participated in a tropical reforestation project that intensely examined the local ecology and climate, as well as the resultant conflicts over land usage..
After receiving her undergraduate degree, she entered the Americorps program as a construction crew leader in the Habitat for Humanity affiliate that serves Chapel Hill. She worked with a wide range of community members, from college-aged to retired volunteers, from homeowners whose families had occupied the same Chapel Hill neighborhood for generations to those who had recently immigrated from all over the world. Her experience at Habitat helped inform her desire to learn more languages and to bring attention to the efforts of international humanitarian non-profits.
Yasmeen Khan
Yasmeen Khan is currently a producer for the "All Things Considered" broadcast at North Carolina Public Radio — WUNC. She is also helping WUNC's news department start Public Insight Network, a new project devoted to bringing more citizen voices into reporting.
Khan graduated from the medical journalism program in 2007 as the second recipient of the Pfizer Minority Medical Journalism Scholarship.
While a medical journalism master's student, Khan completed a health reporting internship in the WUNC news department. During her internship she covered a domestic violence story that won an award from the Public Radio News Directors competition in the category of student newscast spot reporting.
Khan received a B.A. in sociology from Brandeis University in 2001. She continued her interest in international health by working for Pathfinder International, a Boston-based health organization focusing on reproductive and maternal and child health programs abroad.
In 2003, Khan moved to Lima to work for the Pathfinder, Peru field office. For one year she assisted in managing local projects and initiated a pilot program for health interventions of gender-based violence. Khan has also held jobs as a bartender, toll collector and dish washer.
Khan's radio journalism links:
Health Intervention in the Black Church
Barbershop Health Project
Novartis Comes to Holly Springs
Kate Lily Schoen
Kate Schoen is currently a Senior Public Information Representative at the University of California, San Francisco. There she handles media relations and communications for UCSF Children's Hospital and the Department of Pediatrics. Schoen works closely with major regional and national news outlets to inform the public about new research and clinical advances in pediatric care.
Previously, Schoen worked in communications at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif., a national health philanthropy dedicated to providing information and analysis on health issues to policymakers, the media and the general public. Her work at Kaiser focused on communications related to HIV/AIDS, women's health policy and public opinion research.
She was a Roy H. Park Fellow who received a master's degree from the medical journalism program in May 2007.
A native Hoosier, Schoen received her bachelor's degree in clinical and experimental psychology from Indiana University in 2003. During her years at IU, she conducted independent research on the behavioral and social impairments related to the onset and persistent use of marital violence.
After graduation Schoen moved to New Haven, Conn., where she worked as a research assistant at the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale University School of Medicine. There she conducted psychophysical sensory neuroscience research, specifically focused on the brain mechanisms responsible for perceiving sensations of temperature and pain. She has presented her findings at an international conference of the Society for Neuroscience and co-authored papers in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Behavioural Brain Research.
It was Schoen's interest in communicating about science and medicine through the mass media that brought her to UNC. She says that she hopes her work will contribute to a greater understanding of current scientific research and an increased awareness of important medical issues.
Subhashni Singh Joy
Subhashni D. Singh Joy joined MedThink Communications in August 2006 as a medical editor. MedThink is a healthcare communications firm located in Raleigh, N.C. Joy is responsible for editing a wide range of documents, including journal articles and training manuals.
She also continues to write on a freelance basis for The American Journal of Nursing, for whom she has written several articles this year. The articles focus on publications that are important to nurses in terms of expanding their knowledge and improving their skills.
Joy was the first recipient of the Pfizer Minority Medical Journalism Scholarship. She graduated from the medical journalism program in May 2006. During her second year at UNC, she worked in the communications department at the UNC School of Public Health as well as at AlphaMed Press, which publishes two journals. After graduation, she continued working for AlphaMed Press as the production coordinator for the peer-reviewed journal, Stem Cells.Joy received her bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Virginia in 2001. After graduation, she moved to Washington, D.C. and worked for the Cosmetic Ingredient Review as a scientific analyst/writer. There, she compiled research and wrote safety assessments on ingredients in cosmetics, which were used to make recommendations to the cosmetic industry.
Joy's professional interests include improving health communication in minority and disadvantaged populations, particularly in relation to preventive medicine and holistic approaches to health. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and is an amateur photographer.
Will Alexander
Will Alexander currently works as an writer and editor at Ipas, a non-profit reproductive-rights organization in Chapel Hill. He graduated from the medical journalism program in spring 2006. Since graduation, Will has worked as a freelance advisor to the Embassy of Kazakhstan, edited a women’s health textbook and helped design an international promotional campaign for Digene, a global diagnostics company.
Will earned his bachelor’s degree in English in 2000. Before entering the medical journalism program, Will worked at the National STD and AIDS hotline and was a freelance reporter for the Durham Herald-Sun, the Independent and other newspapers.
Will’s interests and areas of expertise include women’s health, how and why people smoke cigarettes, epidemiology, and infectious diseases. He also enjoys traveling, cooking and film.
Jeremy Ashton
Jeremy Ashton currently works for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers as a government reporter in Port St. Lucie, Fla., one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
Since becoming a metro reporter with Scripps in October 2006, Ashton has used the skills he learned in the medical journalism program to cover science-related topics from drinking water fluoridation to water shortages. In addition, his experience with radio and television broadcasting at UNC has helped him adapt to a newsroom that is emphasizing multimedia journalism more and more.
A native of Edenton, N.C., Ashton received his high school diploma in 1997 from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. He moved on to N.C. State University, where he spent four years covering sports for The Technician, the student newspaper. He graduated in 2002 with a B.S. in biochemistry and a minor in journalism.
Before attending UNC as a Roy H. Park Fellow, Ashton worked for nearly a year at the Lincoln Times-News. His later work experience included a summer internship as an editorial writer at Haymarket Media in New York. He also completed a two-month health reporting internship at WUNC-FM after receiving his master’s degree from UNC in May 2005.
To see some of Ashton’s work with Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, visit www.tcpalm.com/staff/jeremy-ashton
Sonya Sutton
Sonya Sutton is currently the Communications Specialist for the UNC Center of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HPDP) and also serves as a project director for health communications research projects. She completed the medical journalism program in May 2005. She was a Roy H. Park Fellow and graduate research assistant on the Teen Media project for both years of the program.
Sutton coordinates the content of the HPDP website, publicity for HPDP activities and all internal communications activities for HPDP researchers. In September 2007, Sutton helped plan the HPDP 21st Anniversary Celebration and created all print and web materials for the event. She represents the Center at University communicator meetings and maintains Center-wide publication and publicity databases.
She also coordinates a seminar series on Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and manages the CBPR Training Core of the Carolina Community Network (CCN), a project focused on reducing health disparities in prostate, breast and colorectal cancers. She serves as a researcher on a project focused on helping North Carolina grantmaking agencies incorporate more evidence-based practices into their grants.
From 2005 to 2006, she was the project director of a social marketing project targeting teens and young adult smokers. The project combined marketing and public health expertise to create recommendations to promote the N.C . Quitline to youth and also developed website content for the N.C. 100% Tobacco-Free Schools Web site.
Sutton received a BSPH in health policy and administration from UNC in May 2000. After graduation, she worked at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, where she served as project manager for the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center. Sutton's responsibilities included managing project budgets, timelines, coordinating external peer review and production of reports and editing journal articles before submission. She worked on several evidence reviews for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, as well as reports on determining disability in speech and language disorders, management of bronchiolitis, CBPR, health literacy, and rating the strength and quality of scientific evidence.
Her interests include health communications, online communications, health literacy, preventive medicine and evidence-based practices. She lives in Hillsborough, N.C., with her husband, daughter and dog.
Amanda Crowe
Amanda Crowe, M.A., M.P.H., runs IMPACT Health Communications, LLC. Throughout her career, she has gained practical expertise in strategic health communications, material and program development that aims to educate and impact consumer health behavior and perceptions, media advocacy, coalition building, health messaging and market research. She is also contributing writer or editor for a number of online health toolkits, newsletters and print publications.
Crowe earned her M.A. in medical journalism as a Park Fellow in 2004 and an M.P.H. in 2005, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been retained by a number of organizations to develop educational materials, conduct market research (e.g., focus groups, field-testing of materials), provide counsel on programming and media outreach, and advance the visibility of key health issues and initiatives. Her interests are in maternal and child health, infectious diseases, oncology, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, pain management and preventive medicine. Her client base predominantly comprises non-profit health organizations and associations.
Before attending UNC, Crowe worked at Cooney Waters Group, a medical/health marketing communications firm based in New York City. In this capacity, she handled such issues as patient-physician communications, HIV drug resistance, disparities in childhood immunizations, meningitis on college campuses, data publicity, primary nocturnal enuresis and influenza and tetanus vaccine shortages. Through her work, Crowe secured important media placements and built alliances with nonprofit health organizations, government agencies and pharmaceutical companies.
Previously, Crowe served as a communications director for the American Cancer Society New England Division where she managed and executed all internal and external communications, including extensive media relations, large-scale public awareness campaigns and crisis communications efforts for the state of Connecticut. In addition, she managed all content and material development including patient education brochures, Web site copy, speeches, presentations, as well as the launch of two targeted newsletters.
Crowe is a member of the American Public Health Association, the National Association of Medical Communicators and the Health Care Marketing and Communications Council. She graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a bachelor of arts in Psychology and concentrations in Markets & Management and Television & Film Studies.
She is based outside of New York City.
Meaghan Hannan Davant
Meaghan Hannan Davant is an associate in the Litigation Department of WilmerHale. She joined the firm in 2004.
Davant received her law degree, cum laude, from Duke University School of Law, where she served as the notes editor for the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law. She was also a Roy H. Park Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she earned a master's degree in medical journalism. At UNC, Davant also served as a teaching assistant for various courses, including courses focusing on the First Amendment and the intersections between journalism and law. Davant received her B.A. from Princeton University.
Before attending law school, Davant was an associate producer with CBS News Productions in New York City, where she produced news segments for the CBS Nightly News, as well as political and historical documentaries for the History Channel’s 20th Century with Mike Wallace, and medical and science documentaries for the Discovery Channel.
Davant is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the District of Columbia, and before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Davant is a member of the American Bar Association and the Virginia State Bar Association.
Recent Highlights:
- Defended a membership association comprised of schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations in a putative class action pending in Minnesota federal district court arising out of a scanning problem on a college entrance exam.
- Represented semiconductor manufacturer in a Section 337 proceeding in the ITC.
- Represented IT management software provider in breach of contract jury trial, resulting in unanimous favorable verdict and damages award.
Anton Zuiker
Anton Zuiker is a journalist, blogger and community builder living in Durham, N.C. He is currently Manager of Internal Communications for Duke Medicine.
Anton earned a master’s degree in medical journalism from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his thesis reporting project was a 12,000-word narrative magazine feature on a rise in HIV among college students in North Carolina.
Anton’s interests include infectious diseases, genetic technology, urban design and online communities. Formerly editor of Northern Ohio Live Magazine, Anton wrote the “Inventing the Future” column about innovation for that magazine.
He organized the “Weblogs and Journalism” seminar for N.C. journalists in March 2004, the UNC “Narratives of HIV” series of media awareness events in Spring 2004, the Triangle Bloggers Conference in February 2005 and the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference in January 2007. He is also organizing the second annual science blogging conference for January 2008.
Anton spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where he organized a multi-island solar electrification project. Anton administers multiple Web sites and blogs, including a personal blog at www.mistersugar.com and a N.C. blogger community site at www.blogtogether.org.
Learn more about Anton at mistersugar.com/about.
Joy Buchanan
Joy Buchanan lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a Web content producer managing six Web sites for HealthCentral.com. She hires writers, edits copy and builds Web sites related to various chronic conditions. She also writes freelance health articles for various publications including Essence Magazine and USA TODAY.
Prior to moving to Washington, she was the consumer health reporter for The Tennessean in Nashville. She's written stories about the HPV vaccine, about the importance of "pre-conception health" in the face of the state's dismal infant mortality rates, and about local people who have traveled overseas for surgery, including hip replacements, dental work and gastric bypass.
Prior to working for The Tennessean, Buchanan was the health and health care business reporter for the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., where she worked for two years. During that time she won an Excel award for her reporting on the rising rates of HIV among young, black women in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. She also was part of the team that won a Virginia Press Association award for its reporting on the cost of being poor in Hampton Roads. Buchanan reported and wrote the piece about health care being more expensive for poor people and for those who lacked insurance.
Buchanan was an intern at the Los Angeles Times before working in Virginia and had been an intern reporter at Newsday in Melville, N.Y., during the summer of 2003.
She enrolled in the medical journalism program at UNC in 2001. She wrote her master's thesis on how well North Carolina newspapers covered Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina's plan to convert from non-profit to for-profit status. Buchanan graduated with her M.A. in 2003.
During her time at UNC, Buchanan wrote for The Daily Tar Heel and The Chapel Hill Herald. She was a student reporter for the daily convention newspapers of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. She was also an intern reporter and copy editor at The Herald in Rock Hill, S.C.
Buchanan was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. She got her B.A. in English from Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., in 1999.
Gretchen Decker
Gretchen Decker is managing editor for the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, a quarterly academic journal published by the American Sociological Association.
Decker graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2003 with a master's degree in medical journalism. She was a Park Fellow and received the Kathryn M. Cronin Academic Scholarship in Medical Journalism while at UNC.
Decker produced, wrote and edited a 30-minute documentary on mental health care reform in North Carolina for her master's thesis. The project looked at the history of mental health reform in the United States and the potential drawbacks to a plan for state reform that calls for the privatization of the mental health care system in North Carolina. The documentary aired in three parts on North Carolina public television.
While an intern, Decker produced two mini-documentaries for statewide public television. The second looked at new research out of UNC that linked where people live to how healthful their eating habits are. The piece won first place for in-depth reporting in the student competition of the southeastern chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
One week after graduating from UNC, Decker started working as an associate producer at WCNC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Charlotte. WCNC-TV is a top-30 market station that brings the best local news to the Charlotte area. The station's fast-paced newscasts emphasize breaking news and have won numerous journalism awards.
Decker is a graduate of Carleton College, where she received a bachelor of arts in history in 1995.
Entering Class of 2000 - graduated May 2002
Steven Baragona
Steve Baragona is currently communications and public affairs officer for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. IDSA is a professional society that represents 8,000 physicians and scientists who specialize in infectious diseases.
Baragona began his career as a lab rat. He spent almost eight years working in biotechnology and basic research, splicing genes, stimulating nerve cells and studying gonorrhea. Tired of the frustrations and failures that are a fundamental part of basic research, Baragona decided it was time for a change. After writing a couple of pieces for UNC publications, he discovered writing about science was much more satisfying than doing it. He enrolled in the inaugural class of UNC's master's program in medical journalism and graduated in May 2002.
While in graduate school, Baragona caught the radio bug working at WUNC. He won awards from Public Radio News Directors and the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication for pieces that aired on WUNC.
After graduating from UNC, he worked for Voice of America in Washington, D.C., reporting on health and science to a worldwide audience of nearly 100 million.
Daniel Childs
Dan Childs currently works in the ABC News National Medical Unit in Boston, where he is the health page producer for ABCNews.com. He completed the master's program in medical journalism in 2002. In 1999 he received a B.S. in Biology with a minor in Journalism from Wake Forest University.
Over the past several years, Childs has produced medical news for print, broadcast and Internet venues. He had previously held a summer position there while in the medical journalism program. At that time, he worked as a medical news researcher, gathering content for ABC's World News Tonight and Good Morning America.
In the course of his two years in the program, Childs also produced medical news for MedMinute, a Duke University radio program, and Carolina Week, the UNC-Chapel Hill student-run television news program.
Prior to his current position with ABC, Childs was based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as editor and host of Cosmetic Surgery and Beauty, a tripartite media effort comprising a magazine, television program and Web site. The magazine and television show, which were the first of their kind in Asia, aimed to educate and inform Asian audiences on trends, issues and techniques in aesthetic surgery.
Before entering the Medical Journalism Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, Childs was staff writer for The Daily Courier, a 12,000-circulation daily newspaper in Rutherford County, N.C. During his tenure as a Courier reporter, he covered the health, hospital and environmental beats; reported on city and county government; wrote a weekly column; and produced photos for the Courier as part-time photographer.
Childs resides with his wife, Rina, in Chestnut Hill, Mass.
Tania Zeigler
Tania Zeigler works in corporate communications for Kaiser Permanente - Colorado Region, where she manages their quarterly magazine, Rocky Mountain Health, does media relations and provides media training to more than 4,500 clinical staff and physicians. She is passionate about reaching wide audiences with health-related stories that are captivating, clear and fair. Zeigler has a master's degree in medical journalism, as well as several years of experience as a print and broadcast reporter, editor and producer.
Her undergraduate degrees in bacteriology and science communication gave Zeigler strong research skills and a keen sense of how to craft messages so that viewers and listeners can understand even the most complex topics. Over the years, she has developed a talent for translating sophisticated concepts into bite-sized morsels of useful information.
As a magazine editor for two years, she learned to spot newsworthy and attention-grabbing stories and to flush out story angles that work. As Miss Wisconsin in 1994, Zeigler developed a confident and mature presentation in front of the camera.
Before she moved to Colorado, Zeigler was a medical reporter and editor for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders in Bethesda, Md., and assisted the Medical Director for the Discovery Health Channel in Silver Spring, Md. Previously, Zeigler was a radio health reporter in Durham, N.C., and a medical reporting intern at NBC News Channel National Medical Bureau and NBC-17 in Raleigh in 2001.
Zeigler was also the producer of two documentaries that each aired as part of a series on North Carolina public television in 2001. She notes that producing documentaries helped her to learn the art of choosing the right expert and searching for details and natural sound that can make a story memorable.
Zeigler is an avid marathoner and has volunteered as a mentor for disadvantaged children for more than nine years. She has played classical violin since she was four and has performed for many of her friends' weddings.
