Native News Online Senior Health Equity Editor Elyse Wild has been selected as one of 21 journalists nationwide to participate in the 2025 National Fellowship at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
The competitive program will provide Wild with expert mentoring and a reporting grant ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 as she develops an ambitious health journalism project. The fellowship focuses on issues related to children, youth and family well-being, and community health.
Wild covers health equity in Indian Country through a solutions-focused lens, with particular emphasis on the overdose epidemic in Native communities and Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. Her selection comes as Native Americans face overdose rates 2.6 times higher than white Americans, according to federal data.
The award-winning journalist recently completed a three-part series examining how Native-led programs blend Indigenous practices with Western medicine to address the opioid crisis. The "Two Medicines" series, produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, highlighted prevention programs, harm reduction strategies and recovery approaches that honor both traditional and clinical wisdom.
In 2024, Wild received the Excellence in Recovery Journalism Award from Faces and Voices of Recovery for her reporting on addiction in tribal communities. The Pulitzer Center also recognized her work on addiction prevention in Native communities as one of the year's standouts.
The 2025 National Fellowship class includes reporters from major outlets such as National Public Radio, the Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker, as well as regional publications like the Chicago Sun-Times and The Columbus Dispatch. Community and ethnic media organizations represented include Capital B News, Verite News and Prism.
The fellowship is funded by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The program will begin with a multi-day learning institute examining how health is shaped by community conditions and structural barriers.
Wild's work has appeared in The Guardian, National Geographic, McClatchy newspapers and NPR affiliates.
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