How to Write an Op-ED: Sharing your Expertise with the Non-Expert – April 29, 2019

Sponsored by the Alan Klass Health Humanities Program and the Office of Educational and Faculty Development

Have you ever wanted to write about your work for a general audience?  This workshop will review the core principles (and challenges) of writing an Op-Ed in your field of expertise for a general or non-expert audience.

Learning objectives:

• describe elements of Op-Eds and other opinion pieces
• identify your focus
• find your story
• describe the structure of the Op-Ed

The Workshop will cover an Op-Ed’s focus, structure and lede.

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Facilitator:  Paul Adams

Paul Adams is an author, journalist and academic who grew up in Winnipeg and is currently an associate professor of Journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.
He was educated at the University of Manitoba, Oxford University and Columbia University. He is a veteran of the parliamentary bureaus of CBC Television, CBC Radio and the Globe and Mail, and also served as the Globe’s Middle East correspondent. He currently writes a column on the media for iPolitics.ca.
Although his career has primarily been as a political journalist, he has a continuing interest in health care. For five years he served on the Journalism Oversight Committee of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).
His first book, Summer of the Heart, Saving Alexandre, was an account of his son’s struggle with congenital heart disease. Since losing his wife, Suzanne, to breast cancer in 2016, he has written on palliative care for newspapers and magazines and has spoken publicly on the subject. He has two upcoming articles for The Walrus magazine, one on the history of palliative care in Canada and the other (co-authored with the Canadian physician and poet Shane Neilson) on narrative medicine.
He is currently a member of the palliative and end-of-life advisory boards for the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and the Ottawa Hospital.