Welcome to Live Well

What an exciting week!

After months and months of planning, meeting and brainstorming, Live Well Clark County launched Monday.

Back in March, I was hired to be The Columbian’s new health reporter. For years, The Columbian had several reporters covering different aspects of health and wellness. But a few months ago, I switched gears from government reporting to full-time health reporting.

In accepting the new position, I also signed on to the Live Well project.

While I’ve been working with Libby Tucker, The Columbian’s web editor, and our IT department for several months, work on the project dates back to before I started working for The Columbian in 2009.

So Monday’s launch was an exciting day for everyone at The Columbian.

We’ve already heard from people who have checked out the site and liked what they saw. But we want to hear more.

If you haven’t yet, take some time to watch the video for tips on preparing a healthy salad, read Dr. Alan Melnick’s advice for safe food preparation and take our poll on barbecuing.

Check out the calendar to find health events occurring in the county. Click on links in the “Our Partners” section to see what local organizations have to offer.

After you’ve given it a look, let us know what you think.

Are we missing anything? What topics do you want to see us cover? What experts do you want to hear from?

In addition to the content provided by our partners, I’ll be writing stories about health and wellness. The stories will appear on the Live Well site and The Columbian’s main website.

Before coming to The Columbian, I covered health and wellness for The News-Review in Roseburg, Ore. I have experience writing about health issues like Medicare, health care for veterans, chronic diseases, physician shortages, insurance costs and technology in the doctor’s office.

I have ideas for upcoming stories and in-depth projects, and I’m in the process of reporting and writing a few of those.

But I’m always willing to hear your story tips and ideas. If there’s something health-related I should be writing about, let me know.

You can contact me via email at marissa.harshman@columbian.com or by phone at 360-735-4546.

If you want to stay up-to-date on what I’m working on, you can “like” my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/reporterharshman or follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/col_health.

My Twitter feed also shows up on the right side of the Live Well page.

You can also check in here at the Live Well blog for posts about health-related news, upcoming events and snippets from my interviews.

Thanks for checking out Live Well.

Health begins here.