Whatever happened to retail health clinics? A few years back, we were hearing optimistic forecasts of a clinic in every Wal-Mart, offering reasonable prices for routine health care and hours convenient for working families.

While the number of such clinics has grown dramatically, from 200 to more than 1,000 between 2006 and 2008, their expansion seems to be leveling off, according to a recent American Medical News story:

The new Healthy City Web site, launched this week, is designed for community activists, but it’s an intriguing data source for California reporters nonetheless, particularly if you’re interested in covering the connections between your health and where you live. Social services beat reporters (are there any of those left?) will find it useful, too.

Who knew that the Dartmouth Atlas could arouse such passion? Many journalists have been trained to see the influential dataset as one of their most reliable sources for reporting on health care costs and regional differences in how health care is delivered in the United States.

Is geography destiny? At today’s Community Health and the Blogosphere conference (Twitter hashtag #uscbloggercon), participants wanted to know more about the ways in which where you live affects your health. If you’re interested in learning more for your reporting or blogging, here are some resources from ReportingonHealth and beyond.

A new proposed bill allowing school employees to provide insulin injections to schoolchildren with diabetes is worth watching as it makes its way through the California legislature. AB1802 was introduced Feb. 10 by Assemblyman Isadore Hall (D—Compton). Advocates for children with diabetes are rallying behind it.

We’re Number 6! Hurray!

There has been quite a flurry of quick-hit news stories about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s health rankings of the nation’s counties. Apparently, at one point on the day they were released, “county health rankings” was the top search term in Google News.

Too bad a number of these stories were boosterish (or defensive) pieces, devoid of context, about where individual counties ranked in comparison to the one next door.