Celebrating 10 Years of Great Journalism Fostered by the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism

1. Will child obesity keep dropping? / “In many ways, it’s up to us.”
Celebrating 10
Years of Great
Journalism
Fostered by
the Dennis
A. Hunt Fund
for Health
Journalism

2. Page 2
In the 10 years since its inception, the Den-
nis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism
has exposed more than 60 influential jour-
nalists from around the country to new per-
spectives on community health andprovided
them with crucial reporting grants and expert
mentoring that have led to major investigative
and explanatory journalism projects that have
informed communities and policy makers na-
tionwide.
These projects have exposed the root caus-
es of good health-- and ill health--and their
connections to community, class, race, envi-
ronment, schools, health access and opportu-
nity; barriers to access to health care; threats
to the health and wellbeing of vulnerable chil-
dren; the role that land use and zoning deci-
sions play in health; and the unfolding story of
Obamacare and its possible repeal. Their work
has won a 2016 Pulitzer Prize and numerous
other prestigious national awards in journal-
ism, recognition by the field of the high quality
and impact.And they have led to major im-
provements in the quality of life and prospects
for health in many communities.
IN MEMORY OF
DENNIS A. HUNT
THE DENNIS A. HUNT
FUND FOR HEALTH
JOURNALISM

3. AMONG THE NOTABLE
IMPACTS FROM DENNIS
HUNT PROJECTS OVER
THE LAST DECADE:
Barbara Laker’s and Wendy
Ruderman’s recent project for
the Philadelphia Inquirer and the
Philadelphia Daily News, “Toxic
City,” has led to a crackdown on
landlords who rent lead-polluted
apartments to families with small
children and new funds for inspec-
tions and mitigation.
JoNelAleccia’s investigation for
The Seattle Times in 2015 and 2016
into whether government inaction
contributed to a cluster of devas-
tating anencephaly cases in Lati-
no families led to a decision bythe
state to begin providing folic acid
supplements to all women of child-
bearing age who are covered by
Medicaid. It also led to more than
40 members of Congress signing a
petition urging the FDA to approve
the fortification of corn masa with
folic acid. Just a few months later,
the FDA announced that it would
permit supplementation.
Bob Ortega of The Arizona Re-
public didn’t stop at just reporting
on the disproportionate number
of Latino children who were hurt
in – or killed by – car accidents.
With mentoring and a community
engagement grant from our Cen-
ter, he assembled a coalition of
community groups to boost rates
of car-seat use by Hispanics. Not
long after his project ran, the Ar-
izona Governor’s Office of High-
way Safety awarded $407,348 to
23 agencies to purchase 2,460 car
seats, a clear response to The Re-
public’s attention to the issue.
Within days of the publication of
Karen Bouffard’s story on infant
mortality in the Detroit News in
2014, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan
announced that he would develop
a plan to fight infant mortality, and
three months later he made prena-
tal care free for all pregnant wom-
en in the city.
“The Shape We’re In,” Kate
Long’s 70-part series for the
Charleston Gazette in 2012 and
2013 on the link between obesi-
ty and chronic disease, has left a
lasting impact on West Virginia. A
group of foundations provided the
seed money for a new organization,
Try This, West Virginia, which has
made 151 mini grants to communi-
ties over three years to encourage
healthy lifestyles.
We extend our heartfelt grati-
tude to The California Endowment
and relatives and friends of Dennis
Hunt for their continuing support
of this important work.
‘Toxic City’
‘How stress, money woes
contribute to the ‘perfect
storm’ for weight gain’
‘The Shape We’re In’
JasonKane’s story for PBS New-
shour about hunger among chil-
dren in affluent Orange County in
2014 led the county’s pediatricians
to begin to ask parents of young
children if the family had enough to
eat and to direct those that didn’t
to food backs and other sources of
free food if they didn’t.
Page 3

4. Our tenth class of Dennis Hunt Fund grantees may be our most talent-
ed and diverse ever, and the projects they will tackle will address a wide
range of important health issues;
2017 DENNIS A. HUNT FUND
FOR HEALTH JOURNALISM GRANTEES
Bethany Barnes of the Ore-
gonian in Portland will report on
the effects on Portland children of
housing insecurity and evictions.
JonathanBullington and Rich-
ard Webster of the The Times-Pica-
yune will explore how the violence
in Central City, one of the poorest
and most dangerous neighbor-
hoods in New Orleans, impacts
the health and well-being of chil-
dren born into this environment.
Ruben Castaneda of U.S. News
& World Report will produce a
package of analytical stories de-
tailing how the Trump adminis-
tration’s immigration policies are
affecting the physical, mental and
emotional health of vulnerable
people in immigrant communities.
Emmanuel Felton of The
Hechinger Report will take an in-
depth look at how schools in East
St. Louis, Illinois are working
with neighborhood associations,
local businesses, faith-based
communities and healthcare
providers to address the needs
of their students.
Antonia Gonzales of National
Native News and Sarah Gustavus of
New Mexico PBS will collaborate on
a project that examines efforts in
Indian Country to improve people’s
health and wellness by using both
culture and scientific research.
Leoneda Inge of WUNC public
radio in New Carolina will report
on how patients were affected by
the closing of the Warren Commu-
nity Health Clinic in Warrenton,
North Carolina, as well as health
care and public policy options go-
ing forward.
Cristina Londono of the West
coast bureau of Telemundo will
investigate the disproportionate
impact on Latinos of back injuries
linked to their jobs as manual la-
borers, as well as promising strat-
egies to prevent them.
Melissa Noel, a freelancer for
NBCBLK and Voices of New York will
report on the difficulties faced by
Caribbean “barrel children” when
they reunite with their parents in
New York City and Miami after hav-
ing been left behind for years.
Page 4

5. 2016 DENNIS A. HUNT FUND GRANTEES
Our 2016 Dennis Hunt grantees have produced an
amazing body of work, including stories that have
already changed policy – and hearts and minds.
As mentioned above, Barbara Laker and Wendy
Ruderman of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadel-
phia Daily News and Philly.com produced a major
series, “Toxic City,” which documented the city’s ap-
parent indifference to the continuing poisoning by
both lead paint and lead-contaminated dust left be-
hind by abandoned smelters. Their project has had
wide-reaching distribution, reaching over five million
people through social media from a wide variety of
sources. It also had real impact. Within seven weeks
of the publication of the first story, Philadelphia May-
or Kenny announced that he was stepping up en-
forcement of a four-year-old law that requires land-
lords to certify that their properties are lead-safe
before renting to families with young kids. The city
also said it would no longer renew the rental licenses
of landlords who failed to certify that their properties
are lead-safe before renting to pregnant women or
families with children 6 or younger. The mayor add-
ed money to the lead abatement program’s budget
to ensure that landlords make their properties safe
for children and also ordered improvements to the
training of lead inspectors. In addition, he formed a
Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Advisory Group
to make recommendations and monitor progress. In
a related action, a state senator secured two state
grants totaling $125,000 to train contractors on how
to renovate old homes without creating lead hazards
and to support the city’s remediation efforts.
Anna Maria Barry-Jester has produced two of five
planned stories for Fivethirtyeight.com on the reasons
for the disproportionately high mortality rate for Afri-
can American’s in the nation’s so-called “Black Belt”
region. In long-form pieces sprinkled liberally with
interactive graphics, she has documented the histor-
ical roots of the region’s health problems, including
slavery, continuing racism, chronic economic depriva-
tion and poor education, as well as current barriers to
health care. The first installment, headlined “Patterns
of death in the South still show the outlines of slavery,”
was shared to over one million people through social
media. Her second piece, “The Healthcare System Is
Leaving the Southern Black Belt Behind,”examined the
multiple reasons why it’s hard for many low-income
residents of the South to get health care, including a
shortage of providers, lack of transportation and the
failure of most legislatures to expand Medicaid.
‘Black Belt’
Page 5

6. Mallory Falk and Eve Troeh reported a series,
“Kids, Trauma and New Orleans Schools,” on trau-
ma-informed approaches to education in New Or-
leans for WWNO-FM, the local public radio station.
“We received more web traffic to WWNO, exponen-
tially more, than anything else posted to WWNO.org
during the month the series ran,” Troeh told us. “We
received many Facebook comments thanking us for
the series. The feedback was incredible and helped
us feel that these are topics our listeners want to
hear in our reporting. When a project featuring vul-
nerable children and families gets the most web
traffic of anything by far -- you know you should do
more.”After listening to the series, New Orleans’ ju-
venile court judges invited Eve and Mallory to brief
them personally as part of their effort to create a
trauma-informed juvenile court system.
Darryl Holliday’s project, “Living with Lead,” was
published online in mid-December by Chicago’s City
Bureau and in a special print edition by Chicago’s
South Side Weekly in December 2016. The project ex-
plained the many ways that Chicago residents are ex-
posed to lead and why it matters. A special text-based
app developed with one of our community engage-
ment grants enabled residents to check lead levels in
their ZIP codes. With additional support from the An-
nie E. Casey Foundation, City Bureau held a series of
community forums to inform residents about how they
could minimize the risks of lead exposure.
Jamie Hopkins’ produced two packages of stories
for the Center for Public Integrity’s “Carbon Wars” se-
ries for USA Today, The Weather Channel and dozens
of newspapers around the country. Her first story ex-
amined the disproportionate effect on health of Amer-
ica’s 100 super polluters. Her second story examined
the effects of traffic-related pollution and traffic acci-
dents on school children. The pollution story was ac-
companied by a data-based interactive that enabled
readers to type in a school name or address and find
out if it fell within 500 feet of a busy route, which in-
creases the risk of adverse health effects The project
earned Jamie and her colleagues a prestigious Thom-
as L. Stokes Award for Best Energy Reporting from the
National Press Foundation.
Page 6
‘Kids, Trauma and New Orleans Schools’

7. ‘Dreamer stress in the age of Donald Trump’
Jenny Manrique Turzo produced three
articles for Univision.com on mental health
problems related to the crackdown on un-
documented immigrants. The first article
focused on stress, depression and anxiety
problems among undocumented college
students in California. (Here’s the Spanish
version.) Her second piece, “Therapy used
for U.S. veterans finds success among trau-
matized immigrants,” ran on Univision.com
on March 14 and included a video. Her fi-
nal piece examined how schools are helping
undocumented students deal with residual
trauma from their migrations as well as stress
caused by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Ed Willliams’ Fellowship project for
KUNM Public Radio in New Mexico, “Endur-
ing Addiction,”took a novel approach to re-
porting on a widely known problem: an in-
tergenerational opioid epidemic in the town
of Espanola with origins in the addictions of
soldiers returning from Vietnam. Ed decid-
ed to look at the epidemic through the eyes
of children, which generated “an enormous
amount of feedback,” Ed told us. The week-
long series culminated in an hour-long radio
documentary, which was one of the most
widely listened-to documentaries KUNM
ever produced. “We received universally
positive feedback from community mem-
bers, which is extremely unusual for news
stories on addiction. I think the documen-
tary successfully conveyed the human ex-
periences lived by those suffering through
the opioid epidemic, and people were very
grateful for that.” Among the stakeholders
who reached out to Ed after the programs
aired were a state senator, treatment pro-
gram directors and community advocates.
The U.S. Surgeon General tweeted about the
documentary (reaching 195,000 followers).
New Mexico PBS and KNCE in Taos inter-
viewed Ed about the project, and stations
in northern New Mexico and Colorado also
aired it. The addiction treatment center in
Velarde N.M. held discussion groups with
recovering addicts about the documentary,
and case workers there asked Ed to speak to
them about his research. The Grandparents
Raising Grandchildren Support Group in Es-
pañola also asked him to speak to the group.
Page 7
To read this summary online and follow the links to
the published projects, go to http://bit.ly/2tNn1wk