Food Systems and Public Health Fellowship for Journalists

Established in 2024, the Food Systems and Public Health Fellowship for Journalists is designed to help early-to-mid career journalists navigate the complexity of issues at the intersection of public health and food systems. The fellowship supports ambitious reporting on overlooked and misunderstood topics rooted in the prevailing model of food production and efforts to promote healthy, just and sustainable food systems

Tom Philpott, a senior research associate at the Center for a Livable Future, helps to facilitate the fellowship, leveraging his experience and expertise from a decades-long career as a reporter on food, agriculture, and the environment.

The year-long fellowship includes an intensive in-person program that begins in beautiful Baltimore, Maryland, for a multi-day immersion experience with Johns Hopkins University faculty public health researchers, food policy analysts, community health advocates, and journalists with extensive experience on the food systems beat. A field trip offers fellows insights on food systems issues with real-life stories of impact and inspiration. Throughout the year, CLF serves as a resource to fellows with ongoing mentoring, networking, and webinars as they develop story ideas that raise awareness of critical food systems topics and push for real change, and among the cohort, camaraderie develops organically.

A request for applications for the 2025 fellowship will be released in early 2025. Please contact Tiffani DeFreitas with any questions, at tdefrei1@jhmi.edu.

In 2024, the Center awarded seven fellowships, bringing together journalists from California, New York, Maryland, and Washington, DC. To learn more about them, click the link below. 

2024 Fellows, Presenters and Program