Training Black Belt Journalists to Help Save Lives
Patricia Thomas
Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication |
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| At UGA: | Since fall 2005 | |
| Education: | BA in English with honors, University of California at Berkeley; MA in Communication, Stanford University | |
| Author: | Big Shot: Passion, Politics and the Struggle for an AIDS Vaccine. New York: PublicAffairs, September 2001 | |
| Work history: |
Thomas has written about medicine, public health, and life science research for many years, and from 1991 to early 1997 was editor of the Harvard Health Letter. In 2002-2003, she was the Visiting Scholar at the Knight Center for Science and Medical Journalism at Boston University. During that year, Thomas taught graduate students, wrote a monograph analyzing news management and reporting during the anthrax attacks of 2001, and wrote a chapter for The War on Our Freedoms: Civil Liberties in an Age of Terrorism. | |
| Research Interests: | Media coverage of science, health and medicine; communication between medical and public health experts and the press; information-seeking by low-income populations. | |
| Teaching: | Health and Medical Journalism, Advanced Health and Medical Journalism (new graduate courses) | |
| Public Service: | Thomas organizes the annual Gnat Line News Briefing for working reporters in Georgia and neighboring states and co-sponsors an annual campus lecture series with the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases. She works closely with ethnic news organizations to improve the flow of health news and information to diverse communities in the South. | |
| Distinctions: | Thomas has won numerous awards for her writing and has been a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. | |
| Interests Outside Work: | Tennis, travel, gardening, and standard poodles. | |