The Kaiser Family Foundation has announced a $2.3 million seed grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in support of efforts to strengthen journalism focused on health, race, equity, and poverty across the South.

The funding will enable KFF to expand its Kaiser Health News operation across the region by establishing a Southern Bureau with a home office in Atlanta and nine new positions to support reporting in at least five states. Veteran journalist and Georgia Health News founder, CEO, and editor Andy Miller will serve as interim bureau chief, and the nonprofit news service he founded will become part of KHN. Sabriya Rice, the Knight Chair in Health and Medical Journalism at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, will join the enterprise as senior advisor to the bureau.

According to KFF, the South has long fared poorly on measures of healthcare access and health outcomes and has seen chronically high rates of uninsured residents — problems inextricably linked with larger issues of politics, race, and inequality. KFF will create a pool of funds to be used to match commitments from national, state, and regional funders across the South to expand the initiative and will partner with local media to produce deeply reported stories that shed light on underreported issues.

"The pandemic has taught us many lessons about how America prioritizes health, how poverty and skin color often determine health and opportunity, and why timely and accurate information from trusted sources is absolutely vital to the health of our nation," said RWJF president and CEO Richard E. Besser. "We believe that cultivating more local journalism of the caliber that KHN produces can bring about a more equitable approach to health policy and practice in this region, and we encourage others to join this effort."

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