The Blue Cross of Massachusetts Foundation and other philanthropies support a training program for medical journalists called the Health Coverage Fellowship. The program, the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to help the media do a better job covering critical health care issues. It does that by bringing in as speakers more than 50 top health officials, policymakers, and researchers. It also brings the fellows out to watch first-hand how the system works, from joining mental health case workers patrolling the streets at night to riding a Medflight helicopter.

The fellowship, now entering its ninth year, runs for nine days and nights each spring. It is housed at Babson College’s Center for Executive Education in Wellesley, and is operated in collaboration with leading journalism organizations. The fellowship is directed by Larry Tye, a former Nieman fellow who covered health and the environment for 15 years at the Boston Globe and has written five books.

The Health Coverage Fellowship focuses on issues ranging from insuring the uninsured to mental  illness, backups in emergency rooms, ethnic and economic disparities in the delivery of care, and environmental health. Attention also is given to public health scares, from understanding the deadly powers of illnesses like the avian flu to knowing the capabilities — and limits — of public health authorities who respond to terrorism and disease outbreaks.

And the teaching does not end when the fellows head back to their stations or papers. Tye, the program director, is on call for the journalists for the full year following their nine days in Wellesley. He helps when they are stuck for ideas, or for whom to call on a story. He assists in thinking out projects and carving out clearer definitions of beats. He also maintains a web site where fellows post their stories.

The Health Coverage Fellowship is a training program with a difference, one that is tailor-made for this troubling time in journalism. Most media fellowships, from the Nieman to the Knights, take seasoned journalists away from their jobs for a full year, require employers to pay part of the cost, and ship back reporters who are shell-shocked at returning to the daily grind. This one lasts just nine days, costs media outlets nothing, and ensures that participating reporters and editors come back with a list of story ideas, a Rolodex of new sources, and a full year of free tutelage from a former Boston Globe medical reporter with 20 years of experience at small, mid-sized, and large newspapers.