Information Saves Lives: Health Response Fund

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“The current global COVID-19 epidemic features mechanisms of delivery of scientific information that are frankly unprecedented, adding to pressure for proper interpretation by the media and public. It’s time to put information in the driver’s seat of global and national epidemic responses.” 

Laurie Garrett, Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism 

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Often, in times of health crisis, addressing urgent physical threats takes precedence, but information is just as important in both preventing health crises like COVID19, and recovering from the ongoing pandemic. 

However, Pandemic-weary journalists are having to cover other health stories including mpox, Ebola, polio, and measles outbreaks, while being challenged with finding new angles and hooks for the COVID-19 story. Some editors may feel the story is tired and are reluctant to take pitches from journalists. 

With this growing gap in mind, Internews is even more committed to combatting COVID19 mis and disinformation and empowering journalists across the world to report accurately on the COVID and health stories affecting their communities: 

• At the close of 2022, our Health Journalism Network published a guide for journalists on Keeping the COVID-19 Story on the news agenda. 
• In January, Internews launched our course: “Journalism in Situations of Crises, Emergencies and Disasters,” in Latin America, providingten $400 scholarships toparticipants who pass. Expanding the course to Latin America, with a focus on Peru, provides journalists a unique training opportunity in science, health and investigative journalism, including the role of COVID19 reporting in humanitarian disasters. 
• Also in January, we published The Power of News Media in Social and Behavior Change Communication, a media resource is intended to shed light on the role of the news media in SBC interventions. 

We’ve also hosted sessions: 

• calling journalists to report on getting vaccines to zero dose children in South Asia, 

• advising journalists on covering the cholera outbreak in Africa while debunking harmful mis and disinformation circulating the crisis,  
• and bringing together Indigenous leaders and journalists in Portuguese language to discuss the role of health workers, traditional medicine and COVID-19. 

We sincerely thank you for your donations, on behalf of our organization and the journalists serving their communities around the world. It wouldn’t be possible without you.