2020 Impact Fund Projects
The USC Center for Health Journalism's 2020 Impact Fund provided reporting support to journalists who think big and want to make a difference in their California communities. We welcomed applications from journalists or newsrooms that want to tackle ambitious investigative or explanatory projects – by themselves, as a newsroom-wide undertaking or as a collaboration with other media outlets in their communities. Below are summaries of the 2020 Impact Fund grantees and their projects.
Caitlin Antonios, a Los Angeles-based freelance reporter and researcher for the Brown Center for Media Innovation at Columbia University, reported for CalMatters and about three dozen other California outlets on problems in the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out in California. Caitlin filed Public Records Act requests to get records of health officials' communications with each other, which gave her insights into the reasons for some controversial decisions. In her first story, she reported that by initially prioritizeing hospitals when they allocated vaccine doses, state and county health officials contributed to the initially low vaccination rate for Latino residents, who rely mainly on community health centers for their care. (The California Department of Public Health changed language on its website following publication.) For her second story, she reported on the roadblocks that California's growers had to overcome to obtain vaccines for their farmworkers, who were at high risk of contracting COVID-19 because of the crowded buses they take to work and the dense housing in which most live. Many growers eventually partnered with community health centers to obtain vaccines directly from the federal government. For her third story, co-reported with Biana Fortis, she reviewed thousands of pages of internal emails and interviewed numerous county officials to document the failure of OptumServe to deliver on a $221 million no-bid contract to coordinate and operate dozens of vaccination sites. After the story ran, Indiana cancelled its testing site contracts with OptumServe in favor of working with community groups. National media outlets have continued to follow the company's problems.
Sammy Caiola of Capital Public Radio, in partnership with Emily Zentner, the station's data reporter, produced a seven-part podcast, "After the Assault: Living with Trauma," with the aim of changing the conversation around sexual violence to better support survivors seeking healing and justice. The podcast and related radio and website stories culminated two years of discussions with survivors, law enforcement representatives and advocates about what can be done to ensure that survivors feel supported and cared for, which began when Sammy received a previous Impact Fund grant. Sammy sought to help people understand what survivors experience in the aftermath of sexual violence, including what some call the "re-traumatization" of police investigations. Since many survivors who report their rapes don’t necessarily get justice, the stories also explored a crucial question for survivors: How can healing happen even when justice does not? Sammy also wrote a narrative piece that focused on survivors' unhappiness with police investigations and medical exams aimed at gaining evidence of rape, and the station published a resource guide on its website.
Adriana Camarena and Alexis Terrazas of El Tecolate, a bilingual outlet in San Francisco, conducted a survey of nearly 400 Latinx residents of San Francisco to create their own dataset to understand why COVID-19 disproportionately impacted Latinx residents. They have used findings from the survey to inform their reporting for both El Tecolate and Teco TV. In the first part of their series, they reported that concerns about being able to pay rent and avoid eviction led most of the survey respondents to continue to go to work, even during the "shelter-in-place" order, which put them at higher risk of contracting COVID-19 than if they had stayed at home. Even so, 80% reported less or much less income than the year before. Sixty-three percent managed to avoid rent debt to their landlords, with 60 percent borrowing from friends or family members and 77% using some or all of their savings to avoid owing back rent. Eighty-four percent described being stressed about paying their rent, with 37% saying they were extremely stressed. Their second story reported that San Francisco has no plan to support the economic recovery of Latinx workers.
Angela Chen, a reporter and anchor for KESQ-TV and Telemundo Noticias 15 in Palm Springs, reported "Troubled Water: The Salton Sea Project," a four-part series on environmental problems stemming from a dying inland sea in the Coachella Valley in southern California. Her stories originally ran weekly in May 2021 and then were aired as a half-hour special on May 27. The stories also ran on KUNA 15, the Spanish-language Telemundo station that serves the largely Latino Coachella Valley. KESQ collected the stories on a landing page on its website that also included historical information about the native Americans who originally inhabited the area (ancestors of the present-day Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian tribe), as well as extended video interviews with Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, Congressman Raul Ruiz, and Tina Shield, the water department manager of the Imperial Irrigation District. Shortly after the final broadcast, members of a coalition of environmental and community organizations working to avert ecological collapse at the Salton Sea hosted a roundtable discussion with state and local leaders on the Sea’s future on Facebook Live Angela told us that her coverage had stimulated community conversations and spurred action by politicians. "After we began airing our series, politicians at all levels -- several city councils, Riverside County Board Supervisor Manuel Perez, Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia, Congressman Raul Ruiz, as well as the California Natural Resources Agency, all put out formal commitments or proclamations to revitalizing the lake. We were the first to hold the state accountable and to elicit a response from them, owning up to state failures after years of neglect. I also did four radio interviews. Viewers were overwhelmingly supportive and impressed with the scope of the project."
Kristi Coale, a freelancer for The Frisc, an online outlet in San Francisco, reported a three-part series on homelessness issues in San Francisco that focued on how the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is structured and how the structural problems within it that have caused it to fall short of its mission. In her first article, she told the story of one family's effort to move from homelessness to housing and its long stay in a shelter, even though almost 10% of the city's supportive housing units were empty. Housing advocates say the problem is dysfunction at the city's largest department, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, which was created four years ago and given a billion dollar budget to move the city's 8,000 homeless people into homes. In her second article, she explored whether "tiny homes" -- or even guaranteed spaces for vehicles in secure parking lots -- might allow San Francisco to help more homeless people temporarily while they await spots in supportive housing, which many need because of health problems or drug or alcohol addiction. Her third story examined how the COVID-19 pandemic had exacerbated the city department's chronic problems -- understaffing, poor information sharing, lack of formal oversight, and challenges keeping track of money -- impeding efforts to move vulnerable homeless people into housing when the pandemic arrived. Her final story examined challenges in delivering mental health care to homeless people in San Francisco, many of whom suffer not only from serious mental illnesses, but substance abuse. Some advocates for the homeless believe that a network of neighborhood-based mental health clinics would make it easier to meet the needs of mentally ill homeless people; right now, there are just two.
Sarah Klearman, a reporter for the Napa Valley Register, reported on the impact of the twin pandemics in Napa Valley in 2020 -- COVID-19 and the worst wildfire season ever -- and the health and economic challenges they caused for the mostly Latino workers who tend Napa Valley’s vines. Sarah met with about 50 farmworkers to elicit their personal stories. In her first story, she explored the devastating effect on farmworker of the layoffs connected with the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 grape harvest, which required fewer workers because of fire damage. Many told her they relied on charity to get through that period. In her second story, she reported that though 12% of Napa Valley growers offer their workers the opportunity purchase group health insurance, many workers say the cost is prohibitive. OLE Health provides free or low-cost health care, but many farmworkers are loathe to take advantage of it because they would have to miss a day of work. In her third story, she reported on farmworkers' growing concerns over the health effects of wildfire smoke, which contains tiny harmful particles known to increase mortality and morbidity. In her final story, she reported on the effects of periodic quarantines on the finances of farmworkers; every time someone on a work crew or living in farmworker housing got COVID-19, the others all had to be quarantined for seven to 14 days, causing them to lose substantial income. With a supplemental community engagement grant, Sarah hosted a health equity discussion series and a personal essay workshop with several youth from farmworker families. Two students wrote about the risk farmworkers faced while working during the wildfires and breathing in toxic air, citing Sarah’s reporting as their source of information. Carolina Padilla, whose grandfather and uncle work in the fields, said, “I appreciated getting to know The Register staff, how writing essays for the newspaper works, and like that we had an opportunity to speak our minds and share our views with our community.”
Holly McDede, a reporter/producer for KQED, produced a three-part series on a growing public shaming movement led by victims of sexual assaults and racism. In her first piece, she reported on how a chance reading of a tweet last summer about a sexual assault at San Francisco's prestigious Lowell High School led a woman who had graduated six years before to revisit her own memories of high school and decide to publicly accuse a classmate of sexual misconduct; eventually, eight other women did so, too. They were in the vanguard of a movement among Lowell alumnae and current students to "out" sexual abusers and demand more scrutiny of complaints by school administrators. In her second story, for KQED's California Report Magazine, she reported on the growing use of social media by students up and down California to demand stronger efforts by school officials to protect them from sexual assault. In her final story, she reported on the impact of the movement on Berkeley High School, where students filed suit against the U.S. Department of Education to overturn Trump administration rules that they believe weakened schools' abilities to respond sexual harassment and assault. Activism over what female students described as a culture of harassment continued even after the pandemic shut down in-person learning, with a female student making a TikTok video accusing specific male students at both Berkeley and Lowell High Schools of sexual misconduct. The video received over 100,000 views and led students throughout the Bay Area to launch Instagram accounts for people to post their experiences of harassment and assault anonymously.