Center for Health Journalism announces inaugural grantees for its Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund
(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
The USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism is delighted to announce the grantees for our inaugural Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund.
This talented and diverse group of grantees — half of whom are journalists of color — will report for The New York Times; USA Today; The Texas Observer; KUOW Seattle, an NPR affiliate; The Sacramento Observer, serving the city’s Black community; and the Mandarin-language Sing Tao Daily.
With this initiative, we’ve seen an outpouring of interest by journalists across the country in reporting more deeply about child welfare challenges and opportunities for system change.
As part of the initiative, the Center for Health Journalism hosted a Child Welfare Symposium last October attended by nearly 80 journalists joining us from across the country. The six reporters selected competitively as recipients of our inaugural Impact Fund will receive grants, intensive individual mentoring and participate in regular virtual gatherings to help usher ambitious projects to publication or broadcast.
In partnership with the Center for Health Journalism, grantees will produce ambitious explanatory and investigative projects on the child welfare system in the United States. Reporting by the grantees will investigate and explore the challenges presented by millions of calls to child protection hotlines each year, the impact of programs aimed at preventing the removal of children from their families, and the role of kinship care in keeping families together. Projects also will investigate challenges with cultural competency in the child welfare system, and the consequences, and address efforts to eliminate widespread racial disparities for Black families.
The Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund is made possible thanks to the generous support of the the Doris Duke Foundation.
“The Doris Duke Foundation is honored to support the Child Welfare Impact Reporting Fund and the critical work of these journalists,” said Jooyeun Chang, Program Director for Child Well-being at the Doris Duke Foundation. “The insights shared during the symposium highlight the complexity of the child welfare system and underscore the importance of sensitive, nuanced reporting to illuminate challenges and opportunities for systemic change. We are inspired by the dedication of this inaugural group of grantees and their commitment to advancing conversations that center the well-being of children and families.”
Here are the 2025 Child Welfare Impact Fund grantees:
Genoa Barrow, Senior Staff Writer, The Sacramento Observer
Jayme Fraser, Data Investigations Reporter, USA Today
Eilís O'Neill, Health Reporter, KUOW Seattle NPR
Garrett Therolf, Senior Reporter and Contributing Editor for the Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program, Freelancing for The New York Times
Sandy West, Freelance Writer, The Texas Observer
Rong Xiaoqing, Reporter, Sing Tao Daily