Carter Center Awards 9 U.S. Journalists Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism

The Center provides state-of-the-art training to fellows on ethical and effective mental health reporting and provides access to mentors and mental health experts

ATLANTA — The Carter Center has named nine U.S. recipients of the 2024-2025 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.

The 2024-25 cohort includes award-winning freelancers, staff reporters, and annual awardees of two sponsored fellowships: the Benjamin von Sternenfels Rosenthal Grant for Mental Health Investigative Journalism, in partnership with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting,the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Grant. The Rosenthal Grant is awarded to a journalist proposing a project that holds a powerful person, institution or government actor accountable for harm or injustice related to mental health or substance use. The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Grant was launched in 2023 in support of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. Journalists who receive this award propose in-depth investigation into a mental health topic of their choice focusing on cutting-edge research in mental health treatments.  Journalists who receive this award propose in-depth investigation into a mental health topic of their choice focusing on cutting-edge research in mental health treatments.

The Carter Center recently announced international fellows in collaboration with SHINE in the Republic of Ireland. A new climate change mental health fellow and additional international fellows will be announced later this summer, in collaboration with The National newspaper in the United Arab Emirates and the Child Mind Institute.

Rosalynn Carter fellows are accomplished journalists who have a high interest in in-depth mental health reporting. Fellows are selected by a committee of current and former journalists, mental health experts, and the U.S. Fellowship Advisory Board, with an emphasis on diversity.

Beginning in September, fellows will pursue innovative mental health journalism projects of their choice during the nonresidential, yearlong fellowship. The projects tackle some of society’s biggest behavioral health challenges and seek to strengthen reporting, drive change in their communities, and help reduce stigma through storytelling.

Carter Center U.S. fellows receive a $10,000 stipend to report on approved mental health topics of interest and intensive training from leading mental health and journalism experts. The fellowships challenge recipients to delve deeper into learning about mental health and substance use disorders and to share reliable information with the public about behavioral health issues.

Fellows will receive in-person and virtual training on effective behavioral health reporting from past fellows and advisors, connect with alumni, be paired with their mentors, and gain a deep understanding of the latest research in mental health and substance use disorders. 

Here is the 2024-2025 U.S. class of Rosalynn Carter Fellows for Mental Health Journalism:

Eli Cahan — Benjamin Von Sternenfels Rosenthal Grantee for Mental Health Investigative Journalism
Freelance/Boston Children's Hospital /ABC News
X: @emcahan
Topic: As rates of eating disorders have skyrocketed, health care facilities devoted to treatment have proliferated. This investigation will examine increasing concerns about patients’ ability to access quality care.

Eli Cahan MD, MS is an award-winning investigative journalist covering the intersection of child welfare and social justice. His written work has been featured in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and USA Today, among other publications. His multimedia work has appeared on TV via ABC and radio via NPR. Cahan’s reporting has won awards from the National Press Club and the News Leaders Association. He has received reporting fellowships from The McGraw Center, The National Press Foundation, and The Dart Center. He has also been a grantee of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and The Pulitzer Center. Cahan is also a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He has published nearly two dozen studies and been featured in NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, and Health Affairs. He is Journalist-in-Residence at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the associate director for the Health Equity Media Fellowship at Stanford School of Medicine, and a health communication advisor for the National Academy of Medicine.

Angela Chen
Anchor/Reporter, KESQ TV (ABC/CBS Palm Springs, CA)
X: @angelawchen
Topic: Exploring the “hopelessness crisis” impacting the mental health of millennials. The project will focus on the efforts to create solutions for a generation impacted by mental health concerns.

Angela Chen anchors the morning and noon news at KESQ News Channel 3, the ABC/CBS station in Palm Springs. She previously taught graduate school classes at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism and Communication. Prior to that, Chen was a reporter and anchor at Fox 26 News in Houston, where she covered hurricanes, terrorism plots, and two Super Bowls. Chen graduated with degrees in world literatures, writing, and psychology from UC San Diego. She earned a Master of Science from Columbia University’s Journalism School in New York City. Chen was a reporter for NY1 and several news stations in Bakersfield, San Diego, and Reno. She’s also reported for several print and digital outlets, including The New York Times and The Huffington Post. Chen is an Emmy Award-winning journalist whose accolades include the Lone Star Award, Philip S. Weintraub Media Award, RIAS German Fellowship, and N.S. Bienstock Fellowship. In 2020, she was awarded a Society of Environmental Journalists grant and a USC Center for Health Journalism Impact Fund grant. Both grants supported a series on the Salton Sea, which later garnered her another Emmy, an Edward R. Murrow, and a Golden Mike Award. Chen also won the Outstanding Explanatory Reporting award from the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Edward Graham — Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Grantee
Nextgov/FCW, Technology Reporter
X: @EdwardJGraham1
Topic: The Department of Veterans Affairs is increasingly using artificial intelligence tools to prevent veteran suicides. The nation’s veterans are at a higher risk of suicide than most populations across the U.S., which has led the VA to double down on its mental health services. But as the VA works to leverage AI tools to prevent suicides, officials must weigh the promise of these technologies with the need to maintain a human element in the care process. The VA is the nation’s largest health care provider, and the steps it takes to prevent suicides will likely influence the medical community’s use of AI tools.

Edward Graham is a technology reporter with Nextgov/FCW, where he reports on the Department of Veterans Affairs and national security issues. He previously covered the 2016 presidential primary in New Hampshire and reported from Charlottesville in the aftermath of the “Unite the Right” rally. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Denver Post, JSTOR Daily, and other outlets. Graham received his master's degree in journalism and public affairs from American University in 2016 and his bachelor's degree in English from Gettysburg College in 2012.

Hanisha Harjani
The Fuller Project
X: @fullerproject
Topic: Investigating mental health care access and impacts on transgender youth. Mental healthcare access for trans youth is fraught, especially in states with gender affirming care bans. This story will look at the challenges trans youth have when it comes to accessing mental health support and what the impacts of navigating this system has on trans youth.

Hanisha Harjani (they/them) is a print and audio journalist reporting for The Fuller Project. They are currently writing about gender at the intersection of labor, tech, and the Silicon Valley. They have won PMJA and SF Public Press awards for their radio reporting on the impact of school closures in the Oakland Unified School District. Harjani graduated from the Pratt Institute with a BFA in writing and received their master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. Before switching careers to journalism, Harjani was a science educator in school and museum settings and feels very passionate about empowering people with information.

Amanda Miller Littlejohn
Freelance/The Washington Post
X: @amandamogul
Topic: Exploring how overworking impacts the mental health of high achievers across four generations. Midlife professionals have become the poster children of burnout due to a cocktail of life changes, societal shifts, and economic forces that have made them a ripe audience for mental health challenges. Ambitious midlife professionals are achievement-minded, both at work and at home. But by overworking to prove themselves in their careers and overworking to either prepare their children or support their parents and older relatives, they end up underworking when it comes to their social bonds, joy/hobbies, health, and self-care.

Amanda Miller Littlejohn has more than 18 years of journalism, public relations, and coaching experience. As the founder of Package Your Genius Academy, she works as an executive coach and executive storyteller helping brilliant minds of color get their life-changing ideas into the world. Miller Littlejohn started her career as a staff writer at the Washington City Paper before becoming a freelance reporter. Her articles on rest and burnout have appeared in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and in her regular column for Forbes. She’s working on a book on burnout and rest, slated to be released in fall 2024. She received dual degrees in English and history from Howard University before participating in a postgraduate journalism fellowship in long-form narrative nonfiction reporting at Northwestern University’s Medill School in partnership with the Association for Alternative Journalism.

Kat McGowan
Freelance/NPR Science Desk
X: @mcgowankat
Topic: Roughly 53 million Americans care for elderly or disabled adults, with well-documented consequences: chronic stress, depression, anxiety, and poor health. This project will recognize caregiving as a new American chapter of life, guide readers through the mental health toll on this invisible workforce and explore the difficulty and rewards. It will help readers find new ways to cope and derive growth and meaning from this difficult phase of life.

Kat McGowan is a reporter and editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has covered health and biomedical research for decades, particularly the intersections between science, commerce, and ethics. Her stories include an investigation of a commercial breast cancer test provider for Mother Jones; an exploration of the misleading marketing of prenatal genetic tests for Quartz; an early look at flaws of the lab-based meat business for Neo.Life; and a feature about the intriguing science of young blood for Popular Science. After becoming a caregiver for several adult family members, McGowan recognized it was an essential public health issue, and in 2020 made it her beat. In 2022 she was awarded an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship to report on family caregiving. For NPR, she wrote about caring for long COVID and about the growing hospital-at-home movement. For the Boston Globe, McGowan explored new protections for LGBTQ + caregivers, and for Wired told a nuanced story about robots, dementia, and self-determination. She believes that caregiving is one of the most important and underreported news stories in the nation today. Previously, McGowan was an editor at Discover and at Psychology Today.

Emi Nietfeld
Freelance/Author/Slate
X: @eminietfeld
Topic: Exploring how America’s growing wealth gap is fueling the teen mental health crisis. Nietfeld has a unique perspective on the toll both individuals with resources and without experience. Having grown up in the foster care system and receiving a scholarship to boarding school and attending Harvard, she realized privileged peers were also struggling; much of their distress stemmed from the same roots. Since then, she has discovered the expansive research into inequality’s role in mental health: it erodes social trust, impacts parenting, and weakens essential bonds.

Emi Nietfeld is the author of “Acceptance,” a critically acclaimed memoir of her journey through foster care, homelessness, and the troubled teen system. Nietfeld’s writing and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and other publications. Her reporting on inequality, mental health, and resilience is supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. A former software engineer, Nietfeld wrote a New York Times op-ed, “After Working at Google, I’ll Never Let Myself Love a Job Again,” detailing harassment and retaliation at America’s best workplace. That essay went viral around the world, becoming one of the paper’s most-read essays of 2021. Nietfeld has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers Conference, Blue Mountain Center, and Hedgebrook. The winner of a Scholastic Gold Key Award and Boulevard Magazine’s Emerging Writers Award, Nietfeld has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, noted in The Best American Essays, and taught in high schools, colleges, and MFA programs. Nietfeld holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard.

Margo Snipe
Freelance
X: @margoasnipe
Topic: Black moms are nearly three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes compared to white women. This project will explore the untold stories of Black maternal mental health, centering on those who are disproportionately vulnerable to psychological disorders related to pregnancy, such as depression and anxiety. The disparity — largely due to increased exposure to trauma and stress — is a significant challenge facing Black families, and it’s bleeding into the decades-long maternal mortality crisis. Narrative writing will intimately illustrate individual struggles and triumphs while data and research will highlight accountability and solutions.

Margo Snipe is a freelance writer based in Florida. For years, her writing has covered critical issues affecting the mental and physical health of Black Americans. Snipe has investigated how racial bias in medicine impacts our lives and identified inequities in the American health care system. In 2024, she was named a Livingston Award finalist for a series that exposed the regulatory system partially to blame for Georgia’s alarming maternal death rates. She is formerly Capital B’s national health reporter, and, before that, worked at the Tampa Bay Times. In 2022, Snipe was recognized by SPJ Florida with the Outstanding New Journalist award. She graduated cum laude from Georgetown University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Aitana Vargas
Palabra (National Association of Hispanic Journalists)
X: @aitanavargas
Topic: This bilingual project will look at the mental health costs of gun violence, particularly school mass shootings –– for Latino students, teachers, school staff and the larger community. As American schools continue to be targeted by shooters, there’s an increasing need to better understand the short- and long-term impact that survivors face. This project aims to shed some light on the unseen and unknown needs Latinos have in the face of a tragedy, particularly given that some of these communities are low-income and have limited access to resources in order to bounce back. This project will be part of Palabra’s “Safe to Learn” series, an ongoing investigative initiative exploring how communities define safety for their children and what those children need to develop their full potential in and out of the classroom.

Aitana Vargas is a Columbia University graduate and an award-winning on-camera news reporter, foreign correspondent, and live tennis commentator based in Los Angeles. She began her career anchoring a local Spanish-language TV show while obtaining her BS in physics from Berry College and then interned at the BBC, CNN International, and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Communications Department in Germany. Her master’s thesis at Columbia University on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was supervised by Professor Rashid Khalidi. Her stories have appeared on Palabra, Público, EFE, CNN Expansión, Narratively, Hoy Los Ángeles, the Los Angeles Times, DirecTV Sports, TVE Internacional, Cuatro/Telecinco TV Network, HITN TV Network, and others. Vargas has received several LA Press Club awards (Investigative Series, Sports Journalist of the Year, Obituary, Consumer, Sports & Hard News) and the 2018 Berry College Outstanding Young Alumni Award. She is a Livingston Award finalist and a 2023 finalist of Floodlight, an initiative between Fundación Gabo and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

Contact: In Atlanta, [email protected]

The Carter Center 
Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.

A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.