The Health Foundation honored three outstanding contributions to medical journalism with the Journalism Prize this year. In front of around 100 guests, the award winners received the awards in a ceremony in Berlin today. A total of 224 contributions from a wide range of topics and genres were submitted this year – from magazine articles to TV reports and podcasts.
First place this year goes to the newspaper article by Thorsten Schmitz.
1st place: “Get out of bed!” by Thorsten Schmitz, published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung
Usually only bad news comes from nursing homes – but are there exceptions? Author Thorsten Schmitz asked himself that. During the preliminary research, he came across the nursing homes Haus Ruhrgarten and Haus Ruhrblick in Mülheim an der Ruhr: He spent a total of five days there, talking to the nursing staff and the manager in the morning, at noon and in the evening, accompanying the residents during therapy and with them during therapy dinner spoken. The story tells of the everyday miracle that the employees in the two homes accomplish every day: with warmth and empathy and with a tailor-made plan to get the residents fit again.
“Beautiful, true-to-life encouragement text that shows exactly how important and difficult it is to rethink care,” was the feedback from the expert jury: “A story about old people’s zest for life has to be told with a love of language – and it succeeds here in an impressive way. From the first paragraph, the readers are drawn into the report and taken on the journey.”
The expert jury voted Issio Ehrich’s magazine article second place.
2nd place: “From the view” by Issio Ehrich, published in GEO magazine
The report “Aus dem Blick” is dedicated to onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. It is a tropical disease that affects more than 20 million people worldwide. River blindness is one of the most common infection-related reasons for vision loss. However, because a large proportion of those affected live in Africa, there are hardly any funds available to research them. Nevertheless, the German biologist Sabine Specht is looking for a cure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“A compassionate, elaborate reportage about a disease that we didn’t pay attention to and about a committed researcher. Thoroughly researched in terms of content, described in great detail and with impressive images,” was the feedback from the expert jury.
3rd place: “Kolja doesn’t want to die, he wants his life back” by Viktoria Morasch, published in ZEIT ONLINE
Third place goes to Viktoria Morsch, who tells the story of Kolja Wortmann and his family in her contribution. Wortmann has Long Covid and subsequently developed ME/CFS. The parents gave up everything to care for their son and find help. But they fall through the cracks, and for a long time there is neither a diagnosis nor a treatment. They also think about euthanasia together.
In addition to this individual fate, the text also reports on the solidarity of those affected, on the hope that lies in the drug BC007 and what all this says about the German health system.
“A grippingly written, linguistically very gripping story of a desperate long-Covid patient and his parents who felt powerless with good background information,” was the conclusion of the expert jurors.
About the award
With the Journalism Prize, the Health Foundation honors journalistic contributions that convey health knowledge in an outstanding way and present connections transparently. The award ceremony took place on August 31, 2023 in Berlin.
The next call for prizes will start in autumn 2023: The application documents for the Journalism Prize 2024 can then be found at www.stiftung-gesundheit.de in the Journalism Prize section. You can see more information about the price in the video by Alexandra Köhler.
Note for the press:
Photos of the award ceremony can be found in the photo gallery.
The archive of all press information can be found on our website.
BIf you have any questions, please contact Alexandra Köhler, [email protected] or 040 / 80 90 87 – 902.