Grants of up to $8,500 USD for journalists reporting on global health security

In-depth media coverage of issues such as pandemic preparedness, health workforce strengthening, effective health workforce strengthening, effective disease surveillance, and equitable access to vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics is essential to keeping the topic of global health security on the public agenda and encouraging European governments to prioritise their funding commitments.

At the same time, mainstream media organisations in Europe are navigating a financially- and time-constrained environment. Resources to fund extensive field research or journalism on big topics, challenges and solutions are not abundant. As a result, they rely on freelancer specialists to produce in-depth stories — who in turn also need financial support to conduct in-depth field research.

The European Journalism Centre’s Global Health Security Call aims to address this challenge. It directly financially supports journalists, connects them with each other and key experts and helps them to inspire other media organisations in Europe to report on big health and policy challenges and solutions.

About the Call

The 2023 Global Health Security Call is a project that will deliver grant funding and facilitate research opportunities to support in-depth journalistic analysis on the topic of global health security.

Its mission is to incentivise and enable impactful journalistic coverage of the topic, in order to create sustained relationships between freelance journalists and media organisations, and engage the public, key stakeholders and decision makers about the topic.

The Call will provide grants of up to $8,500 USD per project and is aimed at journalists publishing stories in opinion-forming media organisations across France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway and Sweden. Applications close on 9 December 2022 at 17:00 CET.

Who can apply

This Call is for individual journalists (freelance or permanently employed ), or for small teams of journalists, that are experienced in reporting on the topic of health, science, development and/or policy.

The funded story must be published in an opinion-forming media organisation (and preferably more than one) that is based in and/or has significant reach to audiences in one or more of the following target countries: France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, Sweden.

The published story must be either one comprehensive long-form story or a serie of stories.

Grantees will have a three-month period (mid January — mid May 2023) to research, produce, edit and publish their story.

How to apply

The application deadline is Friday, 9 December 2022 at 17:00 CET / 16:00 GMT.

Applications need to be submitted, in English, through the EJC’s online grants application platform.

Applications can be submitted by ‘Lead Applicants’ that are individual freelance journalists, individual staff journalists, or freelance journalists or staff journalists submitting on behalf of a team.

The applications awarded funding will need to meet the eligibility criteria and conditions of the grant and will also be shortlisted, by an independent jury, on the basis of the best/ most compelling match to specific selection criteria.

The Call for Applications documentation, which includes the full eligibility criteria, conditions of the grant and selection criteria, and the FAQs can be found here.

Do you have further questions?

If you have questions that are not answered in the Call for Applications document or FAQs, please email globalhealth@ejc.net.

You can also join the AMA (‘Ask Me Anything’) session on Thursday 24 November via Zoom at 15:00 CET at this link.

Kindly use 114019 as the passcode to enter the session.

You can also add the event to your calendar.