Annie Berman covers health care for the Anchorage Daily News. A veteran of AmeriCorps and Vista volunteer programs, Berman is a multimedia journalist who has covered breaking news, crime, culture and politics for Mission Local and KQED, both in San Francisco. She has also helped produce “The Science of Happiness,” an award-winning podcast by PRX, Her work has been published in The New York Times, KQED and The Indian Express, an English-language daily published in Mumbai. She holds a B.A. from Smith College and is graduating from the University of California’s Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in May.
Beat: Healthcare and public health in Alaska
Alaska has the highest per capita health costs of any state, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. As the population ages, health care is the fastest growing sector of the economy. Care in Alaska’s cities is so expensive that residents routinely travel —often with the blessing of private insurers—thousands of miles for treatment because it’s cheape. Far-flung rural communities have other issues, from rural villages with no running water/sewer to high rates of suicide, accidental death and injury to logistical hurdles that make things like basic maternal care a serious challenge.