DEADLINE: USC Annenberg California Health Equity Impact Fund

USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism can help you shine a light on untold health and health equity stories and support your dream reporting project. Our call for applications for the California Health Equity Impact Fund is now open.

Our impact fund offers journalists generous grant funding and five months of professional mentorship as they pursue an ambitious investigative or explanatory project focusing on a health equity issue.

You don’t need to be a health journalist to apply. Instead, many of our best Fellows want to explore how to cover their beats through a health or social welfare equity lens. And reporters who participate include veteran, award-winning journalists and promising data journalists at earlier stages of their careers.

This program advances the Center for Health Journalism's Impact Reporting model, which marries powerful narratives, data and community engagement to serve as a catalyst for change. Through their reporting, past grantees have changed the conversation about under-covered health issues, sparking new policies, practices and laws in their communities.

Our impact fund equips journalists pursuing ambitious stories focused on health inequities with:

• A $2,000-$10,000 stipend to defray reporting costs
• Five months of professional mentorship from a veteran journalist
• Monthly online development and brainstorming sessions with other reporters in their class

Grantees also are eligible to apply for five months of professional mentorship in engaged journalism and $1,000-$2,000 to support those creative efforts.

Who is eligible to apply?

California-based professional journalists (including freelancers) or reporters from national outlets doing a California-focused project. We have accepted reporters in the past from national outlets and small rural outlets. We look for commitment to the reporting project, a passion for the topic, relevant skills and a health equity proposal that will serve local communities and families.

We give preference to:

• Applicants who have a minimum of three years of professional journalism experience
• Reporters pursuing collaborative projects between mainstream and ethnic news outlets

Deadline for applications is Dec 1, 2023.

Learn more.