Program Description

Grady College's graduate program not only prepares students to write and produce powerful stories about health and medical issues for any audience, but also gives them a sophisticated understanding of how health inequities arise. Core courses in this two-year, non-thesis MA concentration emphasize specialized professional training and mass communication research. Area of concentration offerings examine ties between media and public health; Grady electives enable students to hone specific media skills. Students pursue individual passions and career goals by choosing three cognate courses offered by other UGA schools and colleges.

Many Grady courses require community reporting, news and feature writing and multimedia production. Students post blogs, use social networking tools, and collaborate with others on multimedia packages. Students new to journalism learn fundamental values and skills in JRMC 8350, Graduate Newsroom, which prepares them for specialized reporting courses and Grady electives. In JRMC 7355, Health and Medical Journalism, students function as bureau reporters –each covering the health beat for one northeast Georgia county. In JRMC 7356, Advanced Health/Med Journalism, students plan and execute the kind of in-depth story that makes journalism as essential as clean water.

Students develop their own national and international networks. They meet leading scientists, journalists and authors who guest lecture in the core health and medical journalism courses, along with global disease experts featured in the popular Voices from the Vanguard series co-sponsored by Knight Chair Patricia Thomas. Graduate students cover a national scientific meeting every year in Atlanta, and are invited to Grady professional development events for ethnic and traditional media. At national meetings organized by the Association of Health Care Journalists (www.healthjournalism.org) and the National Association of Science Writers (www.nasw.org), Grady students forge new connections, learn from expert presenters, and pitch stories to editors.

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