Sometimes, to understand a disease, you have to see it wear a human face. Last semester, a group of students gave faces to two potentially fatal diseases. 

These students created two six-minute reports that aired on UNC-TV's program North Carolina Now on December 3rd and 4th as part of a Medical Video Communication class offered by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. 

One of the stories focused on sickle cell disease and how it affects a family living in Garner, N.C. The other reported on a 10-year-old North Carolina boy who is living and coping with HIV. The HIV report won first place in the Society of Professional Journalists' 1998 Mark of Excellence Competition
for a five-state region in the Southeast. 

Tim Bajkiewicz, a first year Ph.D. student who wrote the script for the sickle cell disease report, says reporting on science can be very impersonal. "We knew we had to focus the story on people. That's what it all comes down to, but so often programs want to talk about the gee-whiz factor for scientific breakthroughs." 

The students in the class were involved in each step of the reports' creation, from the conception of an idea to the editing of the videotape. "It's one thing if you just do the production part, but being involved in every part puts it into a whole other realm of professionalism and realism," Bajkiewicz says. 

Tom Linden, professor of medical journalism, says the videos exceeded everyone's expectations. "The students put together two professional, broadcast-quality reports on two complex issues that come across in layman's terms." 

Not only did the students relate both stories in easily understandable terms, they also created stories that came across as moving and emotional, Linden says. 

One of the students, Emily Wissa, a senior journalism major with a minor in chemistry, plans to be a doctor and a medical correspondent. While interviewing the 10-year-old boy's mother about the family's struggles with HIV, Wissa dealt with some difficult issues. "The topic is really sensitive," she says. "I had to ask her some tough questions. I had tears in my eyes at one point." 

Stacey Hoffman, a graduate student in the School of Public Health, says the class taught her that it takes an incredible amount of work to create even a small documentary. "We had three hours of tape for a six-minute video," she says. 

In collaboration with the School of Public Health, the class consisted of four journalism students and three public health students. Students from the different disciplines say they learned a great deal from each other. "I think it gives you a really good feel for what media look for and want in a story," Hoffman says. "And that helps us because in public health, we use media as a tool. 

"The journalism majors had to think about the ethical implications, which are not normally emphasized, and we had to think about what would be interesting," she adds. "There aren't a lot of courses here that bridge the two different disciplines. But this class played on the strengths of both of them." 

Suzy Shannon recently earned her bachelor's degree from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.