Challenge will Leverage KHN’s Reporting, Enhancing and Distribution Capability to Strengthen Native Well being Journalism in Communities Throughout the South
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — KFF will develop its Kaiser Well being Information (KHN) operation and well being journalism throughout the South with $2.3 million in funding from the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis (RWJF) to provide extra journalism specializing in well being, race, fairness, and poverty within the area.
With RWJF’s assist, including to KFF’s workers capability, KFF will search assist from different nationwide funders in addition to state and regional donors with the aim of increasing the trouble throughout the Southern states and in Texas.
Within the start-up part, KFF plans to determine a Southern Bureau with a house workplace in Atlanta and 9 new positions to assist reporting in at the very least 5 states. KHN additionally will work with freelancers and media companions all through the area. This enlargement brings the variety of KHN regional bureaus to 4 – together with these in California, the Midwest, and the Mountain States – along with the KHN nationwide newsroom in KFF’s Washington D.C. places of work.
Veteran journalist Andy Miller, CEO and editor of Georgia Well being Information, can be Interim Bureau Chief of the brand new KHN outpost, and the nonprofit information service that Miller based 11 years in the past will turn into a part of KHN. Sabriya Rice, one other distinguished journalist and the Knight Chair in Well being and Medical Journalism on the College of Georgia’s Grady School of Journalism and Mass Communication, will be part of the enterprise starting as Senior Advisor to the bureau.
KFF will set up a pool of funds for use to hunt matching commitments from nationwide, state, and regional funders all through the South to develop the initiative. KHN will search to companion with native media all through the area to provide deeply reported tales that make clear underreported points. The South has lengthy fared poorly on measures of well being care entry and well being outcomes and has been marked by chronically excessive charges of uninsured residents — issues inextricably linked with bigger problems with politics, race, and inequality. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown such disparities into even sharper aid.
The aim is to convey the identical high-quality well being and well being coverage journalism that KHN produces elsewhere to the South, and to convey necessary tales from the Southern Bureau to the nation. As with all its journalism, KHN tales produced from the Southern Bureau can be made freely obtainable for publication by media shops all through the area and the nation and can be printed on khn.org and distributed by way of KHN’s social media platforms.
“The pandemic has taught us many classes about how America prioritizes well being, how poverty and pores and skin coloration typically decide well being and alternative, and why well timed and correct info from trusted sources is completely important to the well being of our nation,” stated Richard E. Besser, President and CEO of the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis. “We consider that cultivating extra native journalism of the caliber that
KHN produces can convey a few extra equitable strategy to well being coverage and apply on this area, and we encourage others to affix this effort.”
“We’ve wished to develop KHN and well being journalism within the South the place the necessity is so pressing for years,” stated KFF President and CEO Drew Altman, who can also be KHN’s founding writer. “The Robert Wooden Johnson Basis’s seed funding and its backing has now made this potential and I’m enormously grateful to RWJF for making the distinction in getting this high precedence initiative launched.”
Media organizations excited about working with KHN ought to contact KHN at KHNPartnerships@kff.org and people excited about offering extra funding assist to develop and enhance well being journalism within the South and past ought to contact KFF at healthjournalism@kff.org. Employment alternatives for the Southern Bureau can be posted quickly at https://www.kff.org/employment-opportunities/.
About KFF and KHN
KHN (Kaiser Well being Information) is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points. Along with Coverage Evaluation and Polling, KHN is without doubt one of the three main working packages at KFF (Kaiser Household Basis). KFF is an endowed nonprofit group offering info on well being points to the nation.
In regards to the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis
Since 1972, the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis has supported analysis and packages to uncover the various components that influence well being, and allow individuals and communities to be as wholesome as potential. Working alongside public well being leaders, entrepreneurs, analysis scientists, policymakers and neighborhood leaders, the Basis is dedicated to making sure that everybody has a good and simply alternative to realize higher well being the place we dwell, study, work and play.