TCTMD’s Yael L. Maxwell Wins Media Excellence Award From ACOEM

TCTMD senior medical journalist Yael L. Maxwell has won an Occupational and Environmental Medicine Media Excellence (OEMME) Award from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

The prize-winning piece was Maxwell’s article Radiation Exposure ‘Extraordinarily’ High for Imagers in Structural Procedures. Her story sums up a growing body of research documenting the risks faced by imagers working in some of the most cutting-edge areas in cardiovascular medicine, most recently a paper by David A. McNamara, MD (Spectrum Health, Grand Rapids, MI), published in JAMA Network Open.

The awards were established to honor work by journalists that promotes a better understanding and awareness of occupational and environmental medicine. This year’s OEMME Award ceremony was held during the American Occupational Health Conference in Philadelphia, PA, last week.

“As a reporter who has covered the field of cardiology for more than a decade, and for a readership of mostly cardiologists, I know that topics like these have wide-ranging implications for people's lives, namely the lives of people who save other people's lives,” Maxwell said during her acceptance speech. “I'm humbled to be able to make a small imprint on the world by sharing why work-related safety is important. I'd also like to congratulate the other winners of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Media Excellence Awards, and thank my TCTMD colleagues for all of their constant support.”

Other winners this year were Katie Camero, BuzzFeed News; Keren Landman, Vox; Christina Cooke, Civil Eats; Lisa Held, Civil Eats; Jessica Bartlett, Boston Globe; Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven, North Carolina Health News; and Cameron Mustard, Emile Tompa, Basak Yanar, and Ron Saunders of the Ontario Institute for Work and Health.

The ACOEM is “a professional medical organization dedicated to promoting the health and safety of workers, workplaces, and the environment,” the award announcement states. “The organization was founded in 1916 and has since become a leading authority on occupational and environmental medicine.”