Michelle Levander
Editor and Founding Director
Editor and Founding Director
My life has been enriched by work as a reporter, editor and, currently, as a journalism educator, news leader and founder of the USC Center for Health Journalism.
In 2004, I launched the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. Before that I worked in daily journalism in California at the San Jose Mercury News and in Asia for the Asian Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine Asia. I also spent a year in Mexico, studying and later writing about immigrants and the tug North as an Inter American Press Association Fellow at El Colegio de México and El Colegio de Michoacán and in villages in the region. I'm a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and UC Berkeley.
To learn more about some of the initiatives I've launched and now manage at the Center, click here to learn about our Fellowships and Impact Funds, here to learn about our reporting collaboratives and here to see the journalism that results. I also co-founded Boyle Heights Beat, a bilingual youth media community news project, and served as its hands-on co-editor and publisher for a decade, along with Pedro Rojas, then executive editor of La Opinión.
I welcome your feedback and ideas on the work we do. Please contact me at editor@centerforhealthjournalism.org.
The Center for Health Journalism has awarded $25,000 in reporting grants from our Impact Fund to help California journalists undertake ambitious explanatory or investigative reporting about health issues in underserved communities in the state.
Eighteen journalists from around the nation will join us this week for the Center for Health Journalism's 2019 Data Fellowship.
We’re delighted to announce the selection of 20 journalists who will be joining us from across the country to participate in the Center for Health Journalism’s 2019 National Fellowship.
We're happy to announc the selection of 23 California journalists to be Fellows with the Center for Health Journalism’s annual California Fellowship. They will join us next week.
We're welcoming 16 talented journalists from around the nation to Los Angeles this week for the Center for Health Journalism’s 2018 Data Fellowship.
Californians remain without a scorecard to track the performance of Medicaid provider groups, and state officials don't seem eager to change that.
The Center for Health Journalism will welcome 22 journalists from around the nation on July 22 to USC's Annenberg School of Journalism.
A yearlong effort to obtain basic Medicaid provider data in L.A. was rebuffed. Some health care leaders shut their doors gently. Others slammed them shut.
With the support of the California Wellness Foundation, the Center for Health Journalism at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism has awarded $30,000 in reporting grants from its new Impact Fund.
It’s hard to imagine a more urgent time than this one, when it comes to supporting great journalism on the health challenges facing Californians.