Health Coverage Fellowship Chooses Class for 2026
BOSTON (March 4, 2026) – The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health today announced that thirteen health and science journalists from around the world have been selected for the 2026 class of the Health Coverage Fellowship.
The 2026 fellows are Scott Hensley from NPR, Hannah Kaufman of The Morning Sentinel/Maine Trust for Local News, Anuradha Mascarenhas from Indian Express, Sarah Neville of the Financial Times, Sarah Owermohle from CNN, Daniel Payne of STAT, Maggie Penman from the Washington Post, Sarah Rahal of the Boston Globe, Amanda Seitz from KFF Health News, Allen Siegler of Mississippi Today, Sheryl Gay Stolberg from the New York Times, Cris Villalonga-Vivoni of Hearst Media/CT Insider, and Nicole Villalpando from the Austin American-Statesman.
The fellowship is designed to help the media improve its coverage of critical health care issues. It does that by bringing in as speakers more than 75 health officials, practitioners, researchers, and patients. It also brings the journalists out to watch first-hand how the system works, from walking the streets at night with mental health case workers to visiting labs that make stem cells and vaccines.
The program, which is entering its twenty-fifth year, is hosted by the Harvard Chan School’s Center for Health Communication, with support from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, Bower Foundation in Mississippi, Connecticut Health Foundation, Fledgling Fund, KFF, Maine Health Access Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and, in Texas, the Episcopal Health Foundation, Congregational Collective at the H.E. Butt Foundation, Methodist Healthcare Ministries, and St. David’s Foundation.
The fellowship will run for nine days, beginning September 11, 2026. It is housed at Babson College’s Executive Conference Center in Wellesley, MA. Larry Tye, who covered health and environmental issues at the Boston Globe for 15 years, directs the program. A former Nieman Fellow and author of nine books, Tye has taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, Tufts, and Harvard.
The September program will focus on a series of pressing issues, including preventing future pandemics, treating mental illness, rooting out racial and ethnic inequities, redressing homelessness, and rethinking later-life care. Attention also will be given to breakthroughs in medical treatments and curbing health-care costs.
The teaching will not end when fellows head back to their outlets. Tye, the program director, will be on call for the journalists for the full year following their nine days in Wellesley. He will help when they are stuck for ideas or whom to call on a story. He also will assist in thinking out projects and carving out clearer definitions of beats.
Tye also hosts a series of Zooms throughout the year for the fellowship’s 300 alumni and hundreds of other health journalists from around the globe. Guest speakers range from senior government officials to a cross-section of health experts, and the format, as with the in-person fellowship, centers around a freewheeling discussion.
Contacts:
Larry Tye
Amanda Yarnell
