Center for Health Journalism Family of Programs
Professional Health Journalism Training & News Partnerships
The Center partners with reporters and their newsrooms to nurture ambitious journalism that impacts policy and spurs new community discussions. Our three all-expenses-paid Fellowships offer journalists a chance to step away from their newsrooms to hone health reporting skills, learning from the country's most respected health and social welfare experts, from top journalists and from each other. We offer an annual Fellowship for California journalists focused on health disparities and health systems; a National Fellowship focused on child and family well-being and a Data Fellowship that teaches data research skills that is open to journalists from around the nation. For six months after our in-person training institutes, senior journalists guide Fellows as they complete ambitious Fellowship projects. Reporters also receive reporting and engagement stipends. Click here to read Fellowship project examples.
Media Grant-Making
We award tens of thousands in grants annually to underwrite substantive explanatory and investigative journalism and community engagement by newsrooms. Our grants, all competitively awarded, provide critical support and resources at a time of industry upheaval. Along with our mentoring, the grants enable the reporting of stories that might otherwise go untold. We also provide funds for engagement with communities to highlight community voices and further the impact of the work. Grants go to Fellows as well as to grantees of our annual Impact Fund.
Center for Health Journalism Digital
Center for Health Journalism Digital is an online community for people across a wide range of disciplines who are concerned about health and health disparities. It provides its members a place to swap ideas, showcase their work and benefit from our reporting insights, archived webinars and tip-filled blogs. To join the Center for Health Journalism Digital community, click here.
The Center for Health Journalism’s News Collaboratives
Through our News Collaboratives, media outlets team with us to tackle ambitious investigative projects on a common theme.
From February-December 2019, our bilingual "Uncovered California" collaborative project brought together Spanish- and English-language media in California to report on challenges facing the state's uninsured and policy options to reduce their numbers. The project's goal: to produce stories that would help audiences understand challenges and opportunities and animate a political debate in Sacramento with stories in local communities. Outlets included newspapers from the McClatchy Corp., Gannett Co., Southern California News Group and La Opinión, as well as broadcasters at Univision Fresno, Univision Sacramento and Capital Public Radio.
Our first Collaborative launched in 2012 with “Just One Breath,” a project that examined the toll of valley fever, a devastating and overlooked disease plaguing California’s Central Valley. The team involved reporters and media outlets in California and Arizona (the Bakersfield Californian, Radio Bilingüe, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, the Voice of OC, Hanford Sentinel, Arizona Daily Star and La Estrella de Tucsón). We oversaw two phases of reporting. After intense coverage for years, in Fall 2018, the governor signed bills passed by Central Valley legislators that brought millions in funding to improve public health tracking of valley fever. Legislators credited our reporting for shaping their awareness of the issues. This month, we published yet another valley fever story! Another Collaborative project, “Living in the Shadows,” brought together six of our 2013 National Fellows to examine the nexus between immigration status and mental health – five ethnic media outlets and one English language outlet.
Webinars
Our Health Matters webinar series offers eight to 10 webinars each year to an audience of thousands annually – journalists, public policy executives and clinicians. Each webinar features one or two experts, along with a prominent journalist, discussing such topics as proposed Congressional action on drug prices, Public Charge and Immigrant Health Under Trump, implications of legalizing cannabis, weaknesses in an employer-based health insurance system and the loss of hospitals in rural America.
Funders
This work would not be possible without visionary foundation partners. We are grateful for support from, The California Endowment, our founding funder; Annie E. Casey Foundation; Blue Shield of California Foundation; California Health Care Foundation; California Wellness Foundation; The Commonwealth Fund; The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; First 5 LA; National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation; and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.