Our Team

Janet Firshein

Senior Vice President for Health Policy and Director of Special Events

Janet has more than two decades of experience writing about and analyzing health care policy and economics issues. Janet joined Burness Communications in 1998 with extensive credentials as a highly respected health care journalist, when she covered and reported on several national debates on reforming health care. During her tenure at Burness, Janet has directed and worked on projects related to health care policy and financing, quality improvement and patient safety, medical professionalism and conflict of interest, access to care for the uninsured, information technology, and public health.

Janet joined Burness after spending nearly five years as an independent health care writer and reporter, working for National Public Radio, WNET television's special series on death and dying and drug and alcohol addiction, the British medical journal The Lancet, and Reuters Health Daily. In 1994, Janet was selected as a Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellow in Health. She is also a recipient of the National Press Club Award for Outstanding Newsletter Journalism.

Before becoming a freelance journalist, Janet spent nearly 10 years covering health policy for the widely read weekly newsletter Medicine & Health, where she served as editor and a congressional correspondent. Janet was also the first Washington bureau chief of Hospitals magazine and spent nearly three years as a writer at the American Hospital Association. She earned her B.A. from the University of Maryland.