Health Communicator of the Year 2010 winner

Health Communicator of the Year

Category proudly sponsored by: 

Celebrating an individual who has shown excellence in promoting understanding of medicine and health through the media.

The impressive skill of being able to explain complex and important information in an engaging way that makes a subject accessible to a wide audience has been ably demonstrated by Sarah Boseley of the Guardian newspaper.

Ms Boseley, the Guardian’s health editor, wrote several articles about poor people’s lack of access to essential drugs in the developing world, particularly in Uganda. In an article entitled “Scandal of Africa’s missing medicines,” published last year, she examined why poor people lacked access to generic drugs that cost pennies and about the resulting adverse effects —direct results, such as death and chronic illness, or indirect, such as drug resistant infections and catastrophic poverty. The apparent reasons given included corruption, supply chain problems, and inadequate funding. Another article described  how the newspaper persuaded GlaxoSmithKline’s chief executive, Andrew Witty, to visit a village in Uganda to see reality at first hand and what steps GSK was planning to take to increase access to essential drugs. The various articles produced by Ms Boseley clearly show that this is work that has an impact on the public’s understanding of medicine and health and has potential to change the way people think about an important issue.

Ms Boseley says: “I am very happy to win, because I think the issues around the shortages of drugs in the developing world are really serious and get insufficient attention.

“I’d like to think my biggest contribution has been to draw attention in the mainstream press to the health needs of people in the developing world—hopefully in a way that respected their dignity.

“I spoke to a lot of people for the articles and am hugely grateful for their help, particularly those in Uganda who were slightly nervous of media attention but who talked to me anyway.

“Winning this award will help reinforce the view on my newspaper that global health matters.”