Health Coverage Fellowship Chooses Class for 2025
BOSTON (March 5, 2025) – The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health today announced that thirteen health and science journalists from across the world have been selected for the 2025 class of the Health Coverage Fellowship.
The 2025 fellows are Lynh Bui of the Washington Post, Jennifer Calfas of the Wall Street Journal, Tiziana Dearing of Boston’s WBUR, Gwen Dilworth of Mississippi Today, Jamie Gumbrecht of CNN, Jason Laughlin of the Boston Globe, Natasha Loder of The Economist, Christine Mai-Duc of KFF Health News, Stephen Simpson of the Texas Tribune, William Skipworth of the New Hampshire Bulletin, Will Stone of NPR, Laura Tillman of the Connecticut Mirror, and Dorcas Wangira of BBC-Africa.
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-fourth 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, Endowment for Health in New Hampshire, Fledgling Fund, KFF, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Maine Health Access 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 5, 2025. 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.
Contacts:
Larry Tye
Amanda Yarnell
