Katrina Wells '04, Healio

Katrina Wells ’04 is the editorial director of Healio, a clinical information news website tailored for healthcare specialists. Wells covers the gastroenterology and hepatology beat. During her time at Saint Joseph’s, Wells was the Entertainment Editor of The Hawk.

What is Healio?

A physician-to-physician resource is what we call ourselves. And so, we are read differently. You are not going to read what we write in the New York Times, or somewhere like that. But we have been linked to from the New York Times and the Washington Post because there are times where we just were at the right place at the right time. We are at a medical meeting when they make a major announcement. Other than the oncology meetings, you are not going to see the general lay press there.

With narrowly targeting healthcare specialists, how do Healio’s writing and editing styles compare to that of general news organizations?

We tend to be much more scientific. Writing about medicine is different in that your accuracy could mean a lot more. We send some of our content back to the sources to check their posts to make sure that we did not take something out of context. We try to make sure that we respect the fact that our sources are often physicians and they are very concerned about how they appear in any of our publications. It helps those relationships as well. Being able to say, “We are not going to put this into print until you give us the okay,” is a big deal for them. They can tend to be wary of press for things taken out of context. What I have learned in medical editing is to have a very scrutinous view of live media. Not that they are not good at their jobs. It is just when you are traveling that wide breadth of information as opposed to being very specialized, it is harder to be as accurate and on point with issues that are facing our readers.

Why do you enjoy working in health journalism?

Health journalism is one of the few areas where I feel like I really do make a difference. I know that doctors utilize our content when they are talking to their patients. I just love being able to talk to physicians who really care about their patients. The chronic disease doctors care so much about their patients They appreciate the patient advocacy aspect of it and really want to do everything they can to help. What they are doing through us and what we are giving to them is the opportunity to bring the latest and greatest to their patients. For me, it is not about the position as much as about impacting healthcare in general and medicine as a whole.

With the prevalence of COVID-19, have you made any changes to your writing and editing process?

We understand everybody’s reporting on the same numbers, the same changes. But what does that mean to the primary care physician versus the editor or the writer who is working with a rheumatologist to know [their] patients are concerned about something completely different than the oncologist and [their] patients that are coming in and saying, ‘Do I get the vaccine?’ This is a global pandemic. Each one of our readers and each of their specialties really is affected very differently. Making sure that you realize who your readers are has become even more important in this time of COVID-19. We saw a huge jump in our traffic numbers and people referring to our site for their daily information. A lot of them were not infectious disease specialists on the front lines of treating COVID-19, but they needed to know everything about it.

With the most recent movement to examine racial injustice in all sorts of industries, how have you pivoted as a health writer and editor?

A big project of mine is to use the voices of our physicians of color and be able to go forward that way. The impact of COVID-19, George Floyd, and everything that went down in 2020 has allowed us to be a little bit softer, if you will, a little bit more interested in the social impacts of medicine.

Healio offers a news editorial internship program, a virtual opportunity, for summer 2021.

— Jackie Collins '21