C-HIT (Connecticut Health I-Team) won four awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists for stories published in 2014, covering topics ranging from health disparities, to the use of restraints in state psychiatric units.
C-HIT columnist Susan Campbell won a first-place award for online general column writing for her piece, Racial Health Divide in Utero, which the judges said examined a “serious and important issue in Connecticut: the disparity in health care for pregnant moms and newborns. Well researched and written.”
C-HIT senior writer and co-founder Lisa Chedekel won second-place in online investigative reporting for her piece, State Restrains Psychiatric Patients at High Rate, which found that hospitals in Connecticut restrain psychiatric patients at more than double the average national rate, with elderly patients facing restraint at a rate seven times the national average.
C-HIT contributor Jodie Mozdzer Gil won a second-place award for in-depth online reporting for a story that examined emergency room visits for asthma. And contributor Peggy McCarthy won a third-place award in the same category for an article that looked at the myriad health problems of women veterans of Iraq.
Also, one of C-HIT’s Summer High School Journalism Workshop graduates, Isaac Stein, won a $1,500 scholarship from SPJ. Now a journalism student at the University of Chicago, Isaac worked to establish a student newspaper at a Bridgeport public high school.