Rachel Zimmerman

While the excellent Martha Bebinger is on leave, I will be managing CommonHealth, and I’m thrilled to take on the job, starting today.

The blog will continue to feature a thoughtful and diverse stable of contributors who work in all aspects of health care, from doctors and insurers to academics, consumers, lawmakers, employers and activists. As health care reform in Massachusetts continues to unfold, I’ll be expanding the list of guest contributors, so if you have strong opinions about cost, delivery, access or quality of care in this state, please contact me at zimmerman08@gmail.com. (And if your opinions include photos, charts, or documents, all the better.)

As for me, I worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper’s Boston Bureau.

I’ve also written for the New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the alternative paper, Willamette Week, in Portland, Oregon, among other publications. I just co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and I spent last year as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. I live in Cambridge with my husband and two daughters.

Again, please feel free to send along ideas, comments or critiques. It should be a fascinating year!

Cheers,
Rachel Zimmerman