USC Center for Health Journalism

Our Mission

Helping journalists investigate health challenges and solutions in their communities with fact-based, rigorous reporting that serves as a catalyst for change.

At the Center, we advance "Impact Reporting" that combines powerful narratives, unassailable data and engagement with communities who journalists serve.

Our Initiatives

The Center for Health Journalism has trained more than 1,200 reporters through in-person Fellowships, which include news partnerships, intensive training programs, mentoring and financial support. Working with the Center, Fellows produce major investigative and explanatory projects that have won journalism honors and changed laws and policies across the country. Its "engaged journalism" initiative helps journalists reinvent their reporting process to be more equitable and inclusive, allowing community voices to help shape the narrative. Our online community's content at CenterforHealthJournalism.org reaches an influential audience that includes journalists, policymakers, clinicians and legislators. Our Health Matters series, with its one-hour webinars, had 10,000 participants in 2020. All of our programs were reconceived in 2020 to help reporters address the twin pandemics we confront today - COVID-19 and systemic racism - within the context of vulnerable children and families, health disparities and health care access.