About The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships
The California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program was established in 2005 as a program to provide mid-career professional working journalists with tools and training to report on health-related topics. We offer journalists a chance to step away from the newsroom to hone health reporting skills. In intimate workshops, field trips and discussions, fellows learn from the country's most respected health and medical experts, from top journalists in the field and from each other. We host three fellowship programs a year: one for California broadcasters, one for California journalists in all media, and one national program. Our fellowship programs cover a wide-array of topics in medicine, and we teach fellows to look out in their own communities for different kinds of health stories. We also host a few special events a year, like visits to the Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center emergency room, or one-day seminars on community health and mapping. For more specific information on the programs we offer, click here.
Our program focuses on content and craft. At a time when immigration is transforming not just California, but the nation as a whole, the Fellowships encourage journalists to chronicle and illuminate the health challenges of an increasingly diverse and polyglot nation. Seminars highlight great story-telling techniques and provide tips for old-fashioned street reporting. We discuss strategies for multimedia storytelling throughout and bring in nationally renowned journalists and health experts to discuss the latest trends.
The fellowships are funded by a generous grant from The California Endowment, the state's largest health foundation, and are a program of the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.
Conferences and all-expenses-paid fellowships are open to all journalists with a passion for health reporting — not just those on the health beat. The Fellowships invite participation from print, broadcast and multimedia journalists working for mainstream and ethnic media. To encourage closer collaboration between each fellow and their newsroom, the program also invites assigning editors and producers to join the fellows for a special fellowship project workshop, at our expense.
ReportingonHealth
ReportingonHealth.org is a project of the USC Annenberg/California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships program. It is funded by a generous grant from The California Endowment. ReportingonHealth is the country's first online community for journalists and new media practitioners who cover health issues. It offers extensive reporting resources, blogs and other content as well as networking opportunities. To join, click here.