USC Center for Health Journalism Names 24 National Fellows, Awards Grants for Reporting on Health and Child Well-Being

The Center for Health Journalism at USC Annenberg has selected 24 journalists from around the nation to participate in the Center’s National Fellowship.

The competitively selected journalists will participate in five days of seminars, workshops and field trips from July 16-20. This year’s program focuses on vulnerable children and families and the community conditions and life experiences that contribute to – or threaten – their well-being.

The Center also provides Fellows with reporting grants of $2,000 to $10,000 to assist them with undertaking ambitious explanatory and investigative projects over the next six months. Fellows receive six months of mentoring by veteran journalists. Five of the journalists will receive additional $2,000 grants and specialized mentoring on community engagement.

The 2017 National Fellowship equips journalists and their newsrooms to tackle pressing child and family well-being reporting, thanks to the generous support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, The California Endowment and First 5 LA.

“Reporting on these issues is more important than ever as a new administration contemplates wholesale changes to America’s safety net programs,” said Michelle Levander, founding director of the USC Center for Health Journalism. “With the Center’s support, National Fellows will tackle stories that will have impact and can save lives.”

Topics the National Fellows will explore in reporting supported by the Center for Health Journalism include the impact of high housing costs on the mental health of Portland families; the disproportionate impact of workplace injuries on uninsured and undocumented Latinos; how Arizona can reduce foster care placements by addressing economic issues that can lead to child neglect; racial disparities in Kentucky’s juvenile justice system; the role of nutrition in the first 1,000 days of life; how children in New Orleans are affected by community violence; the rollback of health reform in North Carolina and Florida; and how schools in a chronically poor Illinois city partner with neighborhood associations, local businesses, faith-based communities and healthcare providers to address the needs of students.

Since 2005, the Fellowships program has educated more than 800 journalists on the craft and content of health journalism, with an emphasis on the relationship between health and place and vulnerable children and families.  Past Fellowship projects can be found here.

Here are the 2017 Grantees:

Fund for Journalism on Child Well-Being

Rebecca Adams, CQ Roll Call
Lily Dayton , New America Media and HealthyCal.org
Tessa Duvall, Florida Times-Union
Kate Howard, Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting
Debra Estacia Krol, Indian Country Today
Dara Lind, Vox.com
Patty Machelor and Perla Treviso. Arizona Daily Star and La Estrella de Tucson
Tracie Potts, NBC News
Lauren Weber, Huffington Post

Dennis A. Hunt Health Journalism Fund

Bethany Barnes, The Oregonian
Jonathan Bullington and Richard Webster, New Orleans Times-Picayune
Ruben Castaneda, US News
Emmanuel Felton, The Hechinger Report
Antonia Gonzales, National Native News, and Sarah Gustavus, New Mexico PBS
Leoneda Inge, WUNC
Cristina Londono, Telemundo
Melissa Noel, NBC BLK and Voices of New York

Center for Health Journalism Grants

Marisa Kwiatkowski, Indianapolis Star
Julio Ochoa, WUSF Public Media, Tampa
Barrington Salmon, BlackPressUSA
Erin Schumaker, Huffington Post