Gary Schwitzer specialized in health care journalism from 1973-2022. He is now retired but continues to publish on his Substack.

Schwitzer was the publisher and founder of HealthNewsReview.org – a unique project dedicated to helping readers improve their critical thinking about health care claims. Grant funding for the project expired at the end of 2018. The site was eventually taken down in late 2022 after a 16-year run.

In 2013, Schwitzer was named to an Adjunct Associate Professor appointment by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. From 2001-2010, he was on the faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, teaching health journalism and media ethics, and earning tenure in 2007. In 2000, he was the founding Editor-In-Chief of the MayoClinic.com consumer health web site.

During the 1990’s, Gary produced groundbreaking shared decision-making videos for the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making based at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. In the 1980s, he worked for four years at the National Office of the American Heart Association in Dallas.

He was a television medical news reporter for 14 years, including being the head of CNN’s 10-person medical news unit. Schwitzer has written about the state of health journalism in JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, the World Health Organization bulletin, Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, BMJ, the American Journal of Bioethics, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, PLoS Medicine, Nieman Reports, Quill, Columbia Journalism Review, Poynter.org, The Daily Beast, The American Editor, and MayoClinic.com. In 2009, the Kaiser Family Foundation published and distributed his white paper on “The State of US Health Journalism.” In 2010, he wrote a booklet, “Covering Medical Research: A Guide for Reporting on Studies.”