The grantees and their projects are:
Southern California News Group – Teri Sforza, an investigative reporter for the Southern California News Group, was the lead reporter on a team of journalists that investigated what happens to infants when they are found to have been drug-exposed in the womb, as well as what happens to their parents. Their four-part series examined the impact of the opioid crisis on the state's MediCal system, which pays for the health care of low-income people, and the state’s child protection system, which provides services to troubled families and oversees foster care for children who cannot remain safely at home. The Bay Area News Group, SCNG's sister chain, provided some reporting for the series.
KRCB and KBBF – Sonoma County-based KRCB, an NPR affiliate and PBS television station, and KBBF, a noncommercial community radio station in Santa Rosa that was the first bilingual public radio station in the United States, collaborated on a series of radio and web stories on health disparities in the Roseland neighborhood, a largely Latino and low-income community that was annexed by the city of Santa Rosa a year ago. Residents of Roseland have worse health indicators than residents of other Santa Rosa neighborhoods.
Momo Chang, East Bay Express and Oakland and Alameda magazines – Momo Chang, a freelance writer, looked into why Californians with sickle cell disease (primarily African Americans) have worse health outcomes than the national norm, except in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Judith Mernit, Capital & Main – Judith Mernit, a contributing editor at the award-winning online publication based in Los Angeles, looked into barriers to implementing harm reduction practices for drug addicts in underserved rural areas of California, which have a high number of drug overdoses.
Molly Peterson, KQED Science – Molly Peterson, a Los Angeles-based reporter, produced a series of radio and web reports on health issues connected to climate-driven heat.