Sharon J. Voas
Sharon J. Voas (Charyn’Joy), was born June 6, 1955. She is a former American investigative reporter. Now disabled, she’s an artist and activist.
| Sharon J. Voas | |
|---|---|
| Photograph of Sharon Voas (Chary'n Joy)Sharon J. Voas - Profile.jpg | |
| Born | June 6, 1955 Rapid City, South Dakota, United States |
| Other names | Chary'n Joy |
| 🏫 Education | Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism |
| 💼 Occupation | Journalist, Activist, Artist |
| Known for | Exposing managed care scandals and environmental risks |
Notable Stories[edit]
Voas won numerous awards for exposing healthcare scandal and environmental risks and presenting solutions in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She was a science, medicine and environmental reporter there from 1988 until she became disabled in 1999.
"Last Rights"[edit]
She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism in 1998 for her newspaper series, “Last Rights.”[citation needed] Americans’ greatest fear about dying is that medical advances will prolong their suffering against their will. It’s well-documented that about half the time, that does happen, even to those with living wills. Voas explored many ways we can gain more control and comfort in our final days. She found 15% of doctors give dying patients enough morphine to end prolonged suffering if the patient chooses. But the doctors risk being charged with murder. Voas covered the Supreme Court case, Vacco v. Quill, on Oregon’s law that protects those physicians. The Court ruled the Constitution does not protect a person’s liberty to make that final choice if it requires a doctor’s help. But the Court left open the door for states to permit it.
Nuclear Power Reactors Fragile and Cracking[edit]
In 1996, Voas revealed all of America’s nuclear power plant reactor vessels are inexorably weakening and often cracking ~ posing a risk of ruptures that could spew radioactivity. The nuclear reactions in our 100+ power plants are contained in steel reactor vessels that are 4-story pressure cookers. They must never rupture. What no one knew when they built the mammoth plants is that when steel is bombarded by radioactivity, it becomes fragile and cracked. When Voas was at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Maryland, she picked up a tidbit of information and pursued it for months. There is no way to replace the gargantuan highly-radioactive vessels, nor any proven method to fix the increasing fragility of the steel. Utilities are all hoping to keep renewing their operation licenses for 40 years beyond their original operating licenses. But the longer the plants run, the more fragile the steel reactor vessels become. NRC regulators said the increasing fragility of the steel raises the risk that something as small as a stuck valve may cause them to break open and spew radioactive materials into the environment, as happened at the Three-Mile Island. nuclear plant.
Exposing Pittsburgh's "Nonprofit" Hospitals[edit]
Voas was the first to expose Pittsburgh’s most renowned “nonprofit” research hospitals had turned into multi-million dollar businesses that behaved more like Wall Street than Mother Teresa. The largest hospitals made millions off holding tax-free nonprofit charity status, but they built empires, and bought jets and executive mansions instead of reducing patient costs or providing much charitable care. The biggest hospitals were gobbling up other hospitals, medical schools and doctors’ practices in a cut throat competition for control of the medical market. Goaded partly by the new managed care system cuts that would leave only the richest hospitals standing, the battle royale she exposed latter led one to go bankrupt. The Allegheny Health Education and Research Foundation (AHERF) collapse was the largest nonprofit health bankruptcy in U.S. history. Its empire-building CEO, Sherif Abdelhak faced 1,500 criminal charges for his financial shell game and was convicted, imprisoned and bankrupted.
Voas was the first to examine the tax returns of the city’s nonprofit hospitals after they became the city’s biggest industry. She was later joined by David Guo. They wrote the prestigious University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) bought a fleet of legendary hospitals. AHERF ~ with its “Fort Knox of Hospitals” ~ decided to knock UPMC off its throne by buying hospitals, medical schools and physicians’ practices in Philadelphia to compete. AHERF’s CEO, Abdelhak, bought a corporate jet and a $1 million mansion for himself. He had just remarried to former beauty queen and local TV news anchor Marlynn Singleton. She wanted to go to medical school without taking the standardized medical school entrance exams. So Abdelhak pressured his newly-purchased Medical College of Philadelphia to admit her anyway. He used the AHERF corporate jet and pilots to fly her to medical school twice a week.
The city and county filed suit to challenge the nonprofit status of Pittsburgh’s nonprofit hospitals a month after the story ran. But they eventually settled on a temporary community service tax. AHERF”s spectacular collapse left a vast void where UMPC expanded into a $13 billion market-dominating global behemoth. UPMC makes $1 billion a year in profit, but spends less than 2% on charitable care. It pays more than a dozen executives $1 million to $6 million and offers its CEO a jet, a chauffeur and a private chef. The name that dominates the skyline of the former Steel City ~ from atop the former US Steel Tower ~ is now UPMC.
Managed Care[edit]
When Pennsylvania’s Gov. Robert P. Casey and Sen. Arlen Specter stunningly received life-saving operations on the same day in 1993, Voas revealed both would probably have died under their own managed care plans. Insurance executives denied that clerks and waitresses would have died in similar situations even though managed care allowed only basic coverage of common illnesses and treatments. They said they convened panels of medical experts to review unusual cases.[1]
So the next week, Voas saved the life of a woman with the same genetic liver defect as the Governor who was denied a similar life-saving transplant by HealthAmerica, which declared it too unusual.[2] It was not HealthAmerica that researched the medical literature on the breakthrough life-saver for amyloidosis patients, but Estelle Zevula’s sister, a campus police dispatcher, who spent hours in medical libraries. The company refused to cover the $150,000 operation because only 17 people had received the treatment. Which raises the question: If insurance companies keep a breakthrough medical advance from saving lives because it’s new and unusual, how will it ever be used? When Voas called HealthAmerica for the story, Michael Blackwood, the company president who had denied such things the week before, personally intervened. He granted coverage for Zevula’s transplant ~ minutes before Voas went to print.[3]
In 1993 Voas revealed that when ambulances rush dying people to the nearest emergency room, HMOs usually deny them ER coverage if the hospital isn’t in the HMO’s network of providers. She told the story of a retired steelworker who tripped and grilled this own flesh on his backyard grill. Just hours after he underwent 2 days of skin graft operations and needed to be kept immobilized to prevent the large sheets of skin from ripping off, his HMO demanded he be moved immediately to a hospital in their care plan. His doctor said his grafts dislodged and caused scarring.
Activism[edit]
Voas has been an activist for economic and social justice and environmental protection since childhood ~ except during her years as a journalist. She was an activist in Clamshell Alliance, a major force in ending the construction of nuclear power plants in America. She and Court Dorsey co-wrote and directed "Reddy Kilowatt, the Mighty Atom" a successful political comedy that educated people about nuclear power from 1976 to 1978. She was one of the “Seabrook 1,414” arrested and jailed in 1977 for occupying the Seabrook Station nuclear plant construction site. It was the first major demonstration against nuclear power in America. Voas helped organize a protest at Seabrook the following year that drew 20,000. Seabrook was the last nuclear plant built in America.
Career[edit]
Voas started her journalism career covering New Hampshire state government for The Lebanon Valley News in Hanover, N.H, from 1982 through 1983, the courts for The Concord (N.H.) Monitor from 1984 to 1986, and racism against the growing Puerto Rican population in Holyoke, MA for The Transcript-Telegram from 1986 to 1987.
The Council for the Advancement of Science Writing awarded her a Fellowship to study science, medical and environmental reporting at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1987.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette[edit]
After she graduated with honors in 1988, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette hired her to translate science, medical and environmental research into compelling stories for a general audience. She became known for her insightful story ideas and investigative reporting skills. Voas also taught Advanced Journalism at the University of Pittsburgh.
In 1989, Voas covered the aftermath of the nation’s worst nuclear accident. She wrote the awarded series “Ten Years After Three-Mile Island,” along with Henry Pierce and Gary Tuma.[4]
In her award-winning 1989 series on the new zoos, Voas wrote that zoos had become a primary way to save endangered species through their global breeding programs. Some zoos have redesigned to eliminate cages and are training the animals to return to life in the wild.[5]
In 1992, Voas wrote the award-winning series "To Fur or Not to Fur"[6] that revealed what animals suffer when they are raised or trapped for their fur. She showed bright-eyed foxes who spend their lives caged until they are killed by a method that avoids damage to their fur: People ram electrodes in the mouths and rectums of the terrified foxes to explode their hearts. Voas indicted the hypocrisy of animal activists who throw red paint on people wearing fur, but not on those who wear leather or eat meat, by comparing the suffering of cattle and poultry raised by agro-industry.
In 1993, Voas wrote that Super Bowl Sunday is the worst day of the year for the number of battered women seeking emergency room treatment.[7]
In 1999, Voas explained why Fido has started to stare at the wall and tries to go out the hinge side of the door: Medical advances now allow dogs and cats to live long enough to get Alzheimer’s Disease too. And a new drug offers hope.
Voas was negotiating a book contract and had been asked to interview to head Columbia University’s Science, Medicine and Environmental Journalism Program when she became disabled in 1999.
Awards[edit]
In 1990, Voas won the Golden Quill Award for the best Science, Health & Technology Reporting for “Ten Years After Three-Mile Island,” along with Henry Pierce and Gary Tuma.
In 1991, Golden Quill finalist (with David Guo) for news features.
In 1994, she won Matrix Award honors for Best Feature for her series “To Fur or Not to Fur.” She also took 1994 Golden Quill honors for Science, Health and Technology Reporting for “HMOs Challenge Emergency Room Visits Most” and “Transfer Demand Angers Patient.”
In 1995 she won Golden Quill honors for Science, Health and Technology Reporting.
In 1996, she won the Robert L. Vann Award of Excellence for her story “Aging Blacks, Sick and Scared” from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation. She also took a 2nd place 1996 Golden Quill Award for Science, Health and Technology Reporting for “A Family’s Hemophilia Holocaust.”
In 1998, she took the National Health Information Bronze Award For “Skin Sense” about skin cancer.
Voas was nominated for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for her newspaper series “Last Rights” that examined our final rights as medical technology prolongs life. The series also won the 1997 Ray Sprigle Award for Excellence in Journalism, the 1st Place Golden Quill Award for Investigative And Enterprise Reporting, honors from the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors Association Award for Feature Writing, and the Matrix Award honorable mention.
References[edit]
- ↑ Burden, Barry C. (2015-02-18). Personal Roots of Representation. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400866939. Search this book on
- ↑ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 14, 1993 · Page 39". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 29, 1993 · Page 1". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2017-07-19.
- ↑ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 28, 1989 · Page 4". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2017-07-13.
- ↑ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 16, 1989 · Page 18". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2017-07-13.
- ↑ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 2, 1992 · Page 15". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2017-07-13.
- ↑ "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 29, 1993 · Page 1". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2017-07-13.
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