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Maria Cohut, Medical Journalist (Episode 52)

    Maria Cohut, Medical Journalist (Episode 52) | Maria uses her literary skills to communicate medical research

    For this episode of the Research Adjacent podcast Sarah is talking to Maria Cohut. Maria is a medical journalist and podcaster who works for Medical News Today and hosts the podcast In Conversation.

    Making medical research more accessible

    Maria is a Features Editor which involves researching and creating a range of content from short news articles and longer features on specific topics. Personal highlights include articles on lucid dreaming and the podcast which has recently covered topics like toxic metals in tampons and whether tattoos can cause cancer.

    She has been at Medical News Today for over 7 years and has seen a rise in public interest in health topics since the COVID pandemic. They find interesting topics through various channels and university press releases are still an important source of ideas.

    “A well written press release will immediately convince you that there’s something that makes a difference in it. Something worth covering and translating for the general public.”

    An unconventional CV

    Perhaps the biggest surprise about Maria is that she doesn’t have a medical or even science background – her PhD is in English literature! As she explains these things are not as unconnected as you might think. She believes that her training helps her to both communicate clearly and also to connect research to society.

    “If you come from the humanities you gain a very sensitive awareness to issues that affect our societies. And the issues that affect our societies are issues that are also going to affect medical research. They’re also going to affect public health.”

    She saw the job advertised at Medical New today towards the end of her PhD when she was feeling isolated and looking for a new challenge.

    “I felt that I wanted to do something that had a more immediate impact. I wanted to feel that I was communicating with people and helping in some way in some way. I already had an interest in issues related to medical research and health. And partly because I love a challenge. Can I learn to use the skills that I built throughout a humanities PhD in science communication?”

    Redefining identity

    That’s not to say it was an easy switch. Maria has grappled with redefining her identity, ultimately realising that it’s not really her job title that matters.

    “I had to ask myself, who are you? What do you want to be? Do you want to be a researcher in the humanities, a literary critic or what do you want to be? And I realised that’s not the right question to ask. I realised that it’s not about your job title or your role. It’s about something deeper. For me what I want to do is help educate.”

    Breaking out of boxes

    Maria now wishes that others could be more open-minded – whether that’s PhD students or employers.

    “There is still this pervasive notion that you have to have a certain background in order to be able to do a certain job. That you have to have a STEM background in order to be able to do science journalism. But regardless of where you’re coming from, different backgrounds come with transferable skills and also they come with unique viewpoints that allow you to bring something fresh into that role.”

    Find out more

    Theme music by Lemon Music Studios from Pixabay

    Episode Transcript

    Maria Cohut 00:00

    If you come from the humanities, perhaps you gain a very sensitive awareness to issues that affect our societies. And the issues that affect our societies are issues that are also going to affect medical research. They’re also going to affect public health.

    Sarah McLusky  00:21

    Hello there. I’m Sarah McLusky, and this is Research Adjacent. Each episode, I talk to amazing research adjacent professionals about what they do and why it makes a difference. Keep listening to find out why we think the research adjacent space is where the real magic happens.  Welcome to Episode 52 of the Research Adjacent podcast today. My guest is Maria Cohut. Maria is a Features Editor for Medical News Today, where she researches and writes articles and also hosts the in conversation podcast that alone would make her an interesting research adjacent guest. But what’s perhaps more surprising is that Maria’s academic background is in English literature, not medicine or even science. As you can imagine. We talk a lot about her career journey, transferable skills, and why we all need to be a lot more open minded about career paths and what it takes to succeed in a particular role. We also talk about how she finds good stories and why press releases are still an important way of getting research news out to journalists. Listen on to hear Maria’s story.  Welcome along to the podcast, Maria. Thank you so much for coming along. Could we hear, first of all, a little bit about what it is that you do?

    Maria Cohut  01:39

    So first of all, thank you for having me, Sarah. I’m so happy to be on your podcast. What I do so I I’m currently a Feature Editor at a website called Medical News Today, which is part of the Healthline media family. And it is medical news website does what it says on the tin. Pretty much we cover a lot of recent news. Excuse me, we cover a lot of recent studies that are related to medical research, public health, nutrition, all that kind of stuff. And I deal with both short form content, which is news as such long form content, which is features that are longer go more in depth on a specific topic. And I also do podcasts. I’ve been doing it for the past two and a half years, I think. And again, podcasts are kind of long form content, but audio. So we look at that recent research in depth with the help of an expert in their field. And long story short, that’s, that’s me. That’s what I totally do.

    Sarah McLusky  02:52

    Excellent. Well, thanks for that overview. I mean, you’ve said, first of all, let’s just, let’s just touch on the on the podcast. I don’t think you mentioned the name of it. So do you want to tell people the name of your podcast,

    Maria Cohut  03:01

    Right? Missed opportunity. Yes, it’s called In Conversation. So if anybody does want to listen, if you look for in conversation from Medical News Today or just Medical News Today In Conversation, it should pop up. It’s on all of the regular streaming platforms as well as our website. So

    Sarah McLusky  03:20

    Excellent. Yes, no, just make sure, because, as they say, people who like podcasts like podcasts, so hopefully that might get a few more listeners. So how long’s your podcast been going?

    Maria Cohut  03:30

    Ah, so the podcast was there before I started working on it. It was started by some of my colleagues who later moved moved on from that, and I think it’s been about, gosh, maybe four years now, although initially it wasn’t a regular a regular fixture, it was a bit of an experiment. And that we were doing different people got involved in podcast matters, and then eventually we decided to make it a permanent fixture. I took over as a sort of facilitator, a strategist, etc, etc, and now I run it with one of my colleagues on the news team.

    Sarah McLusky  04:21

    Excellent. Yeah. So it sounds like something. I think I can resonate with the idea of it starting as an experiment. That’s pretty much yeah as well, yeah.

    Maria Cohut  04:30

    Well it’s an ongoing experiment, really, in a sense. So it’s, it is a monthly podcast, but we keep experimenting with different structures and different approaches, and it works well, because we keep discovering new things.

    Sarah McLusky  04:45

    Yeah excellent. Are any things that you’re putting what your findings working well at the moment.

    Maria Cohut  04:51

    I think people have an appetite for exploring a given topic that they’re interested in. You. In depth. So rather than just touching on on a few superficial things here and there, if they want to, if they want to hear say about the latest research about dementia, I think they’re interested in an in depth approach, where we go, maybe even what we’re doing right now is basically, we take one study, maybe two studies, but typically one study, and we kind of analyze it with an expert in the field, and then we branch out from that and discuss more things to do with that topic. But yeah, I think people have an appetite for that.

    Sarah McLusky  05:39

    Yeah, interesting. And how do you go about choosing or finding the studies that that you talk about, people come to you, or are you out there looking for ideas,

    Maria Cohut  05:49

    Right so the studies that we choose, we choose them based on studies that we’ve already covered, that our regular audience. Gosh, am I allowed to say this on the podcast? I hope so. I hope I’m not. I’m not revealing too much. But yeah, we look at we look at studies that we’ve already covered that generally, we can tell that readers are interested in and that they’re interested in in these studies of being covered across platforms, and not just our website, just in general studies that make the headlines. So that’s how we pick them. And then in terms of finding a guest, we just genuinely search for the top experts in their fields who have expertise on that specific topic. So in May, for instance, the guest that I had on the podcast was somebody who had specific expertise in the interactions between diet and the risk for non communicable diseases. So that would be stuff like heart disease, for instance, who also had an interest in public health. So the the intersection of those, those things, is what I was looking for. And I just looked for the people who had the most experience and the most knowledge on those things.

    Sarah McLusky  07:19

    Yeah makes sense, yeah, yeah, go to them and it when it comes to the stories that you cover on the website, are they also, I mean, again, is it because I know, having worked in the university, there’s a lot of like sending out press releases, you know, things come up. Is that, is that in any way useful? Or do you you’re finding stories in other ways.

    Maria Cohut  07:43

    That is very useful, that is, that is hugely important. So there are lots of, there are, first of all, there, first of all, there are lots of website that publicize these press releases that come in from universities and other research institutions. And those are a port of call. But also universities and other institutions also publicize their own press releases on social media, where they will come straight to the editors. They will send us pictures or the press releases directly, sometimes even when they’re still under embargo. All of these things are incredibly important, I think from an editor’s point of view, to be able to learn in advance about what’s the latest research that is just about to come out. Gives you a chance to assess it. It gives you a chance to reach out to experts and learn more about that research. Ask for comments, all of these things, so they’re very useful. I hope that academics are fully aware of and just institutions that are fully aware of how important it is to communicate with the press like that, because otherwise it can be very difficult to find what’s coming out, if not for these press releases, plus the press releases are really ads in a way, right? A well written press release will immediately convince you that that’s something that makes a difference, and it’s something worth covering and taking to the public and translating for the general public.

    Sarah McLusky  09:21

    Yeah, I think that will be reassuring for for people to hear, because often it feels like these things go into a bit of a black hole.

    Maria Cohut  09:28

    No they don’t. They absolutely don’t. Yeah, we, we look, we look for, and add press releases on a daily basis, literally in my team, um, so they do not go unnoticed.

    Sarah McLusky  09:41

    Okay, yeah, that’s, that’s, you know, a nice, a nice message, I think, for people to hear and with. So you’ve been at Medical News Today for quite a while, haven’t you? Yes, yeah. And I imagine even just in that time, the media seems to be shifting into. Changing very rapidly at the moment. How have things changed in the science media landscape?

    Maria Cohut  10:06

    Oh, yes, so I’ve been with medical use today for seven years. Now it’s seven years in June, exactly, no, actually, seven years in July, seven years in July. And before that, before that, I was doing something completely different. And we can come back to that later, but if you want, but it’s changed a lot in some ways and not that much in other ways. I think first of all, the pandemic, the Covid 19 pandemic, has left its mark in both good and bad ways, and in ways that are neither good nor bad, just just interesting. I think, I think perhaps there’s more interest in medical research now, maybe than they used to be, and more awareness of health issues, and more awareness of an interest in what we can each individually do to take control of our health, in terms of what happens in the newsroom or On the other side, I think there’s been a lot more openness to have people working remotely, rather than being in the office 100% of the time, which I personally think is great, because I think it first of All, it improves accessibility. It improves inclusivity. It means that whenever you’re hiring, you can hire the best person for that role and the most passionate person as well, regardless of where they physically are in the country or in the world, depending. But yeah, what? What else has changed? I think there’s a lot more interest in, again, multimedia type material, such as podcasts, yeah, I think there’s been a booming podcast, in fact, and then maybe shorter content as well. As we consume a lot more material online, yeah, off the top of my head, yeah,

    Sarah McLusky  12:22

    Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, thank you. I think possibly what I might have kind of anticipated, but it is good to hear, as you say, that after covid, there’s, there’s perhaps more interest in medical and health research. You know, it’s maybe made people a bit more aware.

    Maria Cohut  12:39

    I think so. I think people are especially more interested in what they can do, like I said, to take care of their own health, so topics like nutrition, exercise, generally actionable advice is what people are after. In my experience, yeah.

    Sarah McLusky  13:06

    Yeah really interesting. So you touched on there that you used to do something very different before you came to it.

    Maria Cohut  13:16

    That’s right.

    Sarah McLusky  13:17

    So perhaps that’s a good moment to ask you about your career journey and how you’ve ended up doing what you do now.

    Maria Cohut  13:26

    Yeah, wow. Okay, that was a journey indeed. So my background is actually in the humanities. Originally, I was doing a PhD in English literature, before I started working in digital journalism, and from that, basically, rather as I was finishing my PhD, I jumped into the media industry, and specifically medical journalism. So it was, it was a huge jump between two completely or seemingly completely different fields, because I don’t think, I don’t think they’re unrelated, and I don’t think they’re irrelevant to each other. In fact, I think they are very much relevant to one another.

    Sarah McLusky  14:14

    Interesting. Tell me more about that.

    Maria Cohut  14:17

    Well, I think it’s a widespread misconception, perhaps, that if you are trained in the humanities, you’ve got nothing to do with STEM Yeah, or that humanities are irrelevant to science related fields. In my experience, it’s the opposite in my experience, if you have a humanities training, whether that’s literature, as in my case, or something else that primes you for a few different things. First of all, you are used to or you get used rather. There to translating difficult concepts to general audiences in a way that people from different backgrounds are going to be able to understand them. You know how to research concepts that are difficult. You know where to look for the specialized jargon. The definitions of specialized jargon that is, and maybe last but not least, if you come from the humanities, perhaps you gain very sort of sensitive awareness to just issues that affect our societies, and the issues that affect our societies are issues that are also going to affect medical research, they’re also going to affect public health. They’re they’re very strongly connected with all aspects of life, right? And if we think about differences in opportunities or lack of opportunities, or discrimination, or inequality, all of these things that a humanities background sensitizes you to, I think are also going to be there in STEM, whether you’re talking about STEM careers or whether you’re talking about the actual topics that are being studied.

    Sarah McLusky  16:28

    Yeah, interesting. I’ve had a very similar experience of going I sort of did the opposite. So I did worked in my training was in biology, and then I mainly worked in STEM, and then I took a job working in medical humanities in a university as project manager. And again, that realization of how much more overlap there was that I had initially thought that there would be, yeah,

    Maria Cohut  16:54

    yeah, there totally is. I mean, when I was doing my undergrad degree, actually, I had a tutor teaching me Creative Writing who had a STEM background. He had gone from a sorry, he had gone from a STEM background into the humanities and into this full on creative writing career. And he would always say, you know, that that was amazing, because it just gave me a different perspective.

    Sarah McLusky  17:20

    Yeah. But still, it is still quite a big jump. So what was it made you want to go into medical journalism, just that you even considered that as an option.

    Maria Cohut  17:33

    It’s not a straightforward answer. Or rather, there are several different answers that are all equally true. So one, one thing, I think you know, doing a PhD is a very lonely, very involved in very lonely experience, and it can take a very long time. It can take three, four or five years, maybe even longer, depending on your program. And I think for some of us, and this was definitely the case for me doing this PhD in English literature, it became very isolating, and it almost felt like I was talking to myself. So one thing that happened to me in my psyche was I felt that I wanted to do something that I felt had an immediate impact, a more immediate impact. I wanted to feel that I was communicating with people and helping in some way and contributing actively in some way. So that was one, one thing that made me do the jump from an academic sort of career and background to digital media, as to why medical journalism specifically, partly it was by chance. I just happened to see this job ad, and I thought it was intriguing. I thought I sounded great. And I thought, hey, I can do this, partly because I already had an interest in issues related to medical research and just health in general. So I thought, Oh, why don’t I try and do more of this? And partly because there was a challenge, and I love a challenge. And the challenge was, can I learn to use the skills that I built throughout a humanities related PhD in this role that is to do with science communication? So it was, it was all of these things and more. But I think those are, those are the three main things that made me make this choice,

    Sarah McLusky  19:48

    Well you stuck with it. So clearly, it’s

    Maria Cohut  19:51

    I did stick with it. I think at first I wasn’t 100% sure. I went. I thought, Oh, let’s see how this goes. Maybe I just need a little break from. This, this strict academic mindset, and then it really sucked me in in the best way. I found it really interesting. I found because I started, I started on the lower rung, so to speak. I was a medical writer to begin with. And so all I was doing all day every day, was covering this new research that was coming out in the medical sciences. And so it was a big adjustment, but I found it incredibly absorbing. Found it very interesting. I was learning so much every day, there was no way I was getting bored on the job. And I also enjoyed just sort of in real time to see how people were reacting to the coverage that I was I was putting out there, and there was a lot of positive feedback, there was a lot of interest. I could see that people cared and wanted to know about these things. And so, yeah, that gives you, that gives you a very positive feeling. You feel fulfilled, I think,

    Sarah McLusky  21:07

    Yeah, feeling that you’re doing something that’s really genuinely of value to people. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Well, on that note, I like to ask my guests about to share something that they’re proud of, that lived on. So I don’t know if you’ve got any specific examples that you’d like to tell us about.

    Maria Cohut  21:26

    The list is long. Yeah, the list is long. I’m proud of a lot of I so first of all, I used to write a lot more in my role than I do now. Now I do a lot more sort of editing and content strategy, but I used to do a lot more writing, and I used to do a lot of long form writing, and so I’m very proud of a lot of the features that I wrote. Something that comes to mind is I did a couple of features actually on lucid dreaming, which is a topic that I find absolutely fascinating. And those features just took off immediately, and they’re still sort of doing very well. I think there is a lot of interest in that topic. I think it’s something strange and appealing, and people like to read about but yeah, I’m very I’m very proud of, first of all, how I was able to adapt to this new environment, of all of the writing that I did and that I put out there, and of course, most recently, I’m proud of All the work on the podcast, on in conversation, because, and you will know this better than anyone, it is hard work. Yeah, it’s very hard work. But again, it’s very fulfilling. There’s something. There’s a special feeling when, when you do all of the research and put everything together, and you have this wonderful final product that speaks to people again, quite fine, literally, because it is a podcast, but yeah, I’m proud of that. I’m proud of all of the I’m proud of the fact that I was able to meet so many wonderful people as well through the podcast, all of the amazing guests that I’ve had, both researchers and what I like to call experts through lived experience, so people who live with different Chronic Conditions. I’m proud that I managed to create a safe environment for them to come onto and tell their stories. Yeah, so I’m proud of all of these things.

    Sarah McLusky  23:50

    Oh, that’s excellent. There’s nothing quite like seeing something you’ve created out in the world. And yeah, just like something that didn’t exist.

    Maria Cohut  23:58

    Yeah? So you did come alive as well, because it looks so different behind the scenes, right? It’s like, it’s like a puzzle, and you have to find the right pieces, and you have to make everything fit together. And as a as a listener, you don’t necessarily see that. You don’t see it coming together. But it’s, it’s, it’s hard work, and I don’t do it alone. I don’t do it on my own. I can’t take credit for for everything, and I don’t want to take credit for everything. It is definitely teamwork. But, yeah, it takes a lot of effort.

    Sarah McLusky  24:30

    Yeah, nice, nice. Well, I’m sure as these this, whether it’s the transition or just the work you do, the podcast, getting things out hasn’t been without its challenges. So what have been the biggest hurdles along the way for you?

    Maria Cohut  24:47

    Well the obvious hurdle is, again, was adapting in those early those early days, those early months. Was adapting from coming from this intense humanities research background and adapting to this fast paced newsroom environment, dealing with with fields that I hadn’t been directly involved in before, and so that that was, it felt like a challenge. It felt like a challenge, but I’m, I’m very grateful, in a way, to the hiring manager that I worked with back then, who who hired me, who threw me into the thick of it from day one, she was like, in this in this company, we want people to learn on the job, and I was definitely learning on the job from day one. And that really, that actually really helped, and it helped consolidate my self confidence as well, because I I knew that I have what it took to adapt, and I could see it happening as I was doing it. I Another challenge is, and I, I also heard somebody say that one of your guests say that on one of your recent podcasts, it’s actually the latest episode that you put out saying that identity, there’s the issue of identity, right when you make this switch between one type of field or career and another. And that was definitely something I had to reckon with. I had to ask myself, what? Well, who are you? What do you want to be? Do you want to be a researcher in the humanities, a literary critic or Or what do you want to be? And I realized that that’s, that’s not the right question to ask. I realized that it’s not about your job title or your role, it’s about something deeper. I realized that for me, what I want to do is help educate. I want to tell a story. And these are things that you can do in different roles. Yeah, and these, these are based on shared skill sets that you can use you can carry around with you, you know your and perfect your whole life, regardless of the work that you’re doing. Yeah, I guess those were the two top challenges.

    Sarah McLusky  27:15

    Yeah, it sounds like you made a good job of overcoming them, though, yeah.

    Maria Cohut  27:22

    So I think so too,

    Sarah McLusky  27:23

    yeah, and Yeah, certainly. I think, I think a lot of people listening to this will resonate with that idea of identity and thinking about, who is it that you want to do? Because particularly people like not everybody who’s been on the podcast has done a PhD, but of the ones who have, if that sense that the PhD was something very different, that they were really making a big move away from that, and just what that meant for their identity and who they thought maybe they were going to be. So,

    Maria Cohut  27:53

    yeah, you know, I’ve, I’ve been a speaker on some career events as well, and this is indeed a question that comes up a lot of PhD students or early career researchers contemplating a switch, but being uncertain about, you know, what, whether or not they should do it, and what that might mean for them and for their identity. And I think it doesn’t, it doesn’t have to feel this heavy. Yeah, I think it only feels this heavy, because, again, we’ve, we’ve maybe allowed some misconceptions to grow. And those misconceptions are, oh, if you, if you start doing a PhD in this field, then you can only do take this one career path. You can only be a researcher, you can only be an academic. And it’s not, it’s not true, because you can use a lot of what you’ve learned and a lot of the interest that you’ve gained throughout your PhD, whatever that PhD is, in your next career move, you can take them with you. You do take them with you. That’s one thing. The other thing is you don’t have to fully give up what you’ve been doing and your research interests. I still do you know some of my own research in my spare time. It’s, it’s more quiet, and I don’t dedicate as much time to it, perhaps right now, but it’s, it’s still there. I still have those interests. I still dip into that occasionally.

    Sarah McLusky  29:21

    Yeah that’s good way, good way to think about it. I think definitely, yeah. So as you’ve listened to previous episodes of the podcast, so you will know that I do like to ask people, if they had a magic wand, what they would change about the world that they work in. So what would you like to use your magic wand for?

    Maria Cohut  29:39

    That is, that is a tough question. And everybody says the exact same thing, wow, this is a really tough question. I had to think about it. And I also had to think about it, yeah, I don’t know. I think going back again to some of the issues that we’ve discussed, I think. Think there still is this sort of pervasive notion that you have to have a certain background in order to be able to do a certain job. Do you have to have a STEM background in order to be able to do science journalism? I think that idea still persists in my field more than it should, and if I had a magic wand, that’s what I would change. I would change people’s minds. I would try and make them see that just because you’ve you’ve had a more complex career journey, it doesn’t mean that you’re not qualified or able to do this type of job. You definitely can, regardless of where you’re coming from, because, again, different backgrounds come with transferable skills, and also they come with unique viewpoints that allow you to bring something fresh into that role.

    Sarah McLusky  31:07

    Yeah, I think that sounds like an excellent use of the magic wand. I am all for getting people out of boxes and letting them be human beings with, you know, skills and interests and exactly, exactly different to bring So, yeah, granted, I shall let you have your magic wand for that one. It just remains to say, thank you so much for coming along. If people want to find you, find your work, where’s the best place to track you down

    Maria Cohut  31:39

    Again thank you so much for having me. I think the best place to track me down is probably actually LinkedIn. So if you just look for my name, Maria Cohut, C, O, H, U, T, on LinkedIn, you’ll find me, and I post there quite frequently about the work that I do, especially on the podcast, and otherwise just go to medicalnewstoday.com and read our splendid work that we do.

    Sarah McLusky  32:15

    Thanks for listening to Research Adjacent. If you’re listening in a podcast app, please check your subscribed and then use the links in the episode description to find full show notes and follow the podcast on LinkedIn or Instagram. You can also find all the links and other episodes at www.researchadjacent.com. Research Adjacent is presented and produced by Sarah McLusky, and the theme music is by Lemon Music Studios on Pixabay, and you, yes you, get a big gold star for listening right to the end. See you next time you.

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