The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust in New York City has announced a three-year, $1.3 million grant to the Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, the educational arm of the Association of Health Care Journalists, to help improve health journalism. 

The grant will provide educational opportunities and resources for journalists reporting on healthcare issues, enabling them to write more accurate and informed stories for public consumption. To that end, the funding will support three general areas: conferences and workshops, including the center's annual conference, regional workshops on niche health topics, and an annual rural health journalism workshop; fellowship programs aimed at assisting ethnic media, rural reporters, journalism students, and journalists on non-health beats who routinely must report health-related stories, as well as the National Cancer Reporting Fellowships — which AHCJ launched last year in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute — and the AHCJ-CDC Health Journalism Fellowship, which marks the revival of a collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Web resources, including the continuation of an online medical studies curriculum, the launch of a new curriculum related to infectious diseases, and the enhancement of a health data repository on the healthjournalism.org portal.

"We're thrilled to continue our support for AHCJ to ensure more journalists have the tools and resources to cover critical health topics," said Helmsley Trust CEO Stephanie Cuskley. "Many of our efforts at Helmsley focus on complex health challenges, and we hope more reporters will feel equipped to illuminate these issues to the public and improve lives."