Just a quick note of congratulations to friends of Terra Sig (FOTS, if you will) on earning 2008 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism from the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ).

Online
FIRST: M.B. Pell, Jim Morris and Jillian Olsen, Center for Public Integrity, “Perils of the New Pesticides”

SECOND (tie): Tara Parker-Pope, The New York Times, The “Well” blog

SECOND (tie): Scott Hensley, Jacob Goldstein and Sarah Rubenstein, The Wall Street Journal Online, The Wall Street Journal Health Blog

THIRD: Randy Dotinga, Voice of San Diego, “Suicide Magnet” [Part I, Part II]

You’ll recognize Scott Hensley as the subject of my post the other day on his departure from the WSJ for greener pastures (I almost spelled it, “pasteurs.”), leaving the blog in the hands of Jacob and Sarah.

Tara Parker-Pope, formerly of The Wall Street Journal and now at the NYT, is an avid reader of many blogs in the ScienceBlogs.com network and has linked to us on occasion – even responding to comments.

The awards will be presented at a luncheon April 18 at Health Journalism 2009 in Seattle. Princeton University health policy expert Uwe Reinhardt will be the keynote speaker.

Continuing in the “I Can’t Believe My Life Happens to Me” files, I ran into Uwe Reinhardt at Duke two years ago when he was trying to find a Board of Trustees meeting – we ended up sitting down over coffee where he gave me a personal tutorial on health care economics and the quality-adjusted life year (QALY). A complete gentleman and amazingly clear instructor of this health policy-challenged blogger who had no idea who Reinhardt was until I Googled him afterward.

Back to the matter at hand: I congratulate all of our online health communications colleagues, of course, but especially those who have been our supporters through the years.

w00t!

h/t @ivanoransky