Kansas Public Radio gains 3-year funding for health reporting

LAWRENCE -- The financial health of Kansas Public Radio's weekly health series has improved dramatically.

The news and information that KPR at the University of Kansas brings listeners about health issues and public policy will continue for another three years.

KPR recently secured funding from two statewide foundations to continue weekly reporting on Kansas residents' health, but the focus of the series will broaden. The first three years of the series had focused exclusively on children's health. "Kansas Kids: A Prescription for Change" will become "Kansas Health: A Prescription for Change" and will widen its scope to include health topics concerning all Kansans: children, adults and seniors.

Grants from the Sunflower Foundation in Topeka and the Kansas Health Foundation in Wichita have made this possible. Each foundation will contribute about 50 percent of the money needed to keep the series going through 2006. The Sunflower Foundation will donate $106,000 to the series; the Kansas Health Foundation will donate $100,000.

"We're pleased that this series has touched so many lives," said J. Schafer, KPR news director. "Bryan Thompson has done a remarkable job reporting on all manner of children's health issues. This will give him a chance to broaden the reach of his reporting. There are hundreds of stories we could do about the physical, mental and emotional health of Kansans. We look forward to the challenge."

Since the beginning of the series, reporter Thompson has traveled more than 50,000 miles covering children's health issues as diverse as the lack of dental care in rural southwest Kansas, vending machines in school and how they contribute to childhood obesity, fetal alcohol syndrome, bullying and the dramatic rise in childhood cases of asthma. He'll bring that breadth of knowledge to the new issues of the wider-ranging health series.

"I'm very grateful to the Sunflower Foundation and the Kansas Health Foundation for making it possible for our health reporting to continue," Thompson said. "There are so many issues we couldn't address under the original series because they didn't affect children for the most part. Of course, there are still numerous stories yet to be done that may involve children, but they will no longer be our exclusive focus."

The series will change focus in January 2004. Part of that change will involve the series' Web site. All reports for the "Kansas Kids" series are available at http://www.kansaskidshealth.org. The new series will use the site http://health.kansaspublicradio.org. The "Kansas Kids" site will remain active so people can listen online to all the stories in both the children's health series and the general health series.

The "Kansas Kids" series has received numerous awards for broadcast excellence. The series won first-place awards in 2000 and 2001 from the Kansas Association of Broadcasters in the Public Affairs Program category. In 2001, 2002 and 2003, the series won KAB first-place awards for In-Depth News Reporting. The Kansas City Associated Press also has lauded the series, giving it three awards during 2002 and 2003 in Enterprise Reporting. In 2001, "Kansas Kids" received a national award from the Public Radio News Directors for local reporting.