Marketplace Awarded Grant from The Commonwealth Fund to Support Health Coverage
Contacts: Brad Robideau
(651) 290-1113
brobideau@americanpublicmedia.org
www.americanpublicmedia.org
Barry Scholl
(212) 606-3841
bas@cmwf.org
www.commonwealthfund.org
Marketplace Awarded Grant from The Commonwealth Fund to Support Health Coverage
(Los Angeles, Calif.) May 9, 2007—The Commonwealth Fund has awarded American Public Media's™ Marketplace® a $50,000 grant to support expanded coverage of health issues at Marketplace's Health Desk.
American Public Media's award-winning portfolio of programs—Marketplace, Marketplace Morning Report® and Marketplace Money®— provides business, economic and personal finance news with a fresh sound that addresses listeners' financial needs from wallet to Wall Street. The Marketplace Health Desk, one of several specialized Marketplace news desks, covers the latest domestic and international health issues. The Health Desk is located at WGBH in Boston, Mass.
The Commonwealth Fund grant will support Marketplace reporting on the current health crisis with a special focus on health care costs and containment, and analyses of other national and global models of delivering health care. This coverage will provide the public and health policymakers practical information to help them make informed health care decisions.
The Marketplace Health Desk will also use American Public Media's innovative Public Insight Journalism® model to inform and deepen its coverage. Marketplace journalists use Public Insight Journalism to tap the knowledge of audiences and bring that knowledge into the reporting process to create coverage that is more relevant. The national network of Public Insight Journalism participants has more than 27,000 people from all 50 states and 22 countries.
"The Marketplace Health Desk has a history of making the complexities of the U.S. health care market comprehensible and meaningful for listeners," said Karen Davis, President of The Commonwealth Fund. "The Commonwealth Fund is pleased to be able to support this critical source of information."
"Marketplace has covered health care as a critical issue for almost 20 years," said JJ Yore, executive producer of Marketplace and vice president of programming at American Public Media. "But now that the recent and upcoming elections have put health care back on the political agenda again, this is an opportune time for us to rethink our coverage and redouble our efforts, focusing on coverage that looks at solutions around the country and the world. We are delighted that The Commonwealth Fund is helping make this possible."
The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation working toward a high performance health system. The Commonwealth Fund is on the Web at www.commonwealthfund.org.
American Public MediaTM is the nation's second-largest producer of public radio programs, reaching 14.7 million listeners nationwide each week. National programs include A Prairie Home Companion®, Saint Paul Sunday®, Marketplace®, Marketplace Money®, The Splendid Table®, Being™ and special reports produced by its national documentary unit, American RadioWorks®. American Public Media is the national production and distribution division of Minnesota Public Radio®. Minnesota Public Radio, along with its sister company Southern California Public Radio, belongs to a larger family of companies within American Public Media Group, a national nonprofit organization whose purpose is to develop resources, services and systems to support public media for public service. A complete list of stations, programs and additional services can be obtained at www.americanpublicmedia.org.
Source: Data are copyright Arbitron, Inc. Arbitron data are estimates only.Fall 2006