Stanford University School of Medicine
The Robert G. Fenley Writing Awards: News Releases
Gold
Stanford Medicine immunologist Bali Pulendran’s Sept. 29, 2023, Cell paper was going to be not only newsworthy but, to some, controversial. The study showed convincingly that very young children’s immune systems respond differently from adults’ in response to infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This different immune response appeared to explain why young kids infected by the virus are extremely unlikely to become very sick.
This explanation, however, begged the question: Do kids actually have an ultra-low incidence of severe COVID? In fact, they do. For some readers, this was going to be a tough sell. While the phenomenon is well documented, the case would need to be made at the outset.
The likely identification of a source of infants’ resilience to COVID-19 opens the door to potential applications in adults: for example, a nasal spray that could stimulate, in adults’ upper respiratory tracts, the same immune-response capabilities that routinely occurs in those of infants, preventing the virus from getting a foothold.
What was the most impactful part of your entry?
Telling the exciting and important story of Pulendran’s immunological findings, which could have implications for all of us, required first assuring skeptical readers that kids are naturally resistant to COVID. Having done that (to the point of providing links to supporting documentation), science writer Bruce Goldman then described how in the new study, Pulendran and his colleagues poked their methodical noses into the nasal affairs of infants and toddlers before, during, and after SARS-C0V-2 infection, and plucked out a number of distinct and surprising ways in which these youngsters’ immune response proved superior to that of adults.
This formula appears to have worked. Since its publication on Oct.12, 2023, Goldman’s story has been viewed online more than 62,000 times as of Sept. 26, 2024. The initially embargoed news release generated write-ups and airings in Scientific American, USA Today, TIME, Newsday, San Francisco stations KPIX-TV and KCBS Radio, and more.
What challenge did you overcome?
For at least the first two years of the pandemic, the public had been treated to breathless stories blasting out of TV sets about terrible juvenile-COVID cases and warnings from health authorities and media outlets about children’s susceptibility to the virus. Elementary schools and preschools all over the country had shut down or gone remote, with immense social consequences.
Telling the exciting and important story of Pulendran’s immunological findings in infants, which hold likely implications for all of us, required first assuring skeptical readers that kids are naturally resistant to COVID – that scary stories readers had been exposed to during the pandemic’s peak suggesting high rates of severe COVID cases among kids were overblown.
So, rather than simply crafting a news release describing the results of this important study, Goldman sought to put the findings in context by leading with the assertion that “infants and young children rarely develop severe or enduring cases of COVID-19” and providing early links to definitive documentation establishing the assertion as fact.
Contact:
Alison Peterson
medawards@stanford.edu