Solutions Journalism Network from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

Andy Krackov is senior program officer for the California HealthCare Foundation’s Market and Policy Monitor program. Below, he writes about Knight News Challenge: Health and the companion prize awarded by the California HealthCare Foundation this week. 

In Riverside County, east of Los Angeles – where the Knight News Challenge winners were announced – nearly half of children ages 2-17 eat fast food two or more times in a given week, according to survey data. That’s 10 percentage points higher than the statewide average, and more than in neighboring counties.

In fact, in some Riverside County cities, like Coachella and Indio, more than 4 in 10 fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders are obese or overweight.

Most local elected officials struggle to obtain meaningful data about a range of health problems. Finding, analyzing, and visualizing data takes time and expertise. And then there’s the work of researching who else is addressing the problem and how their approach is working out.

At California HealthCare Foundation, we weren’t aware, for example, of a central database that catalogs successful, local responses to wide-ranging health problems. What we did know, from conversations with county supervisors, is that finding evidence-based solutions to these types of health problems remains a priority.

That’s why we posed the following question, as part of developing a related prize for the Knight News Challenge: How do we get health data into the hands of city and county officials – and spur them to use that information to improve people’s lives?

Among the many interesting ideas generated, one stood out: “Positive Deviance Journalism,” a method of reporting that has been popularized by the Solutions Journalism Network. As a result, we awarded Solutions Journalism $122,500.

The mission of Solutions Journalism is to broaden the role of journalism, not just to uncover society’s ills, but to report on responses to those problems. Through this News Challenge project, Solutions Journalism will collaborate with at least eight newsrooms and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation to identify “positive deviance” in the health sector—examples of promising community health results grounded in evidence and data. They will also develop a curriculum for reporters and editors to understand the positive deviance approach to data analysis and story generation, and provide expert mentors to help newsrooms develop editorial strategies.

The Knight News Challenge demonstrates that if you pose a challenging question to smart thinkers, you’re likely to receive some innovative and practical ideas that may not be on your radar screen. With Solutions Journalism’s approach to our challenge question, the whole community is educated – yes, elected officials and the county policymaking apparatus, but also local health care providers and nonprofits, and concerned citizens.

Knight Foundation, too, is supporting Solutions Journalism Network as part of the News Challenge. We’re thrilled we can continue to partner with Knight on effectively harnessing health data, whether it’s on childhood nutrition or some of the many other pressing health care issues that communities across California face.