Carter Center Announces 2025-2026 Rosalynn Carter Fellows for Mental Health Journalism

ATLANTA — The Carter Center has named nine U.S. recipients of the 2025-2026 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism, as well as one international fellow focused on the intersection of mental health and climate change. The 10 fellows will receive training and mentorship to responsibly report on a variety of topics related to mental health and substance use disorders.

The 2025-2026 cohort includes award-winning freelancers, staff reporters, two Georgia journalists, and the third annual awardee of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Grant — awarded to a journalist who proposes an in-depth investigation into a mental health topic of their choice focusing on cutting-edge research in mental health treatments. The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Grant was launched in 2023 in support of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.  

[About the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Grant] 

The international fellow focused on the intersection of mental health and climate change is supported by the Carter Center’s Human Rights Program and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute.  

The Carter Center also collaborates with international fellows at The National newspaper in the United Arab Emirates and Shine in Ireland. The National reporter will be announced later this summer, and Shine recently announced the 2025-2026 Rosalynn Carter fellow: Newstalk journalist James Wilson. 

This year’s fellows will be the second cohort to use curriculum designed in partnership with The Poynter Institute, in addition to webinars and in-person training at The Carter Center in Atlanta. These accomplished journalists applied to the fellowship and exhibited a high interest in in-depth mental health reporting. They were selected by a committee of current and former journalists, mental health experts, and the U.S. Fellowship Advisory Board. 

Beginning in the fall, fellows will pursue innovative mental health journalism projects of their choice during the nonresidential, year-long fellowship. The projects tackle some of society’s biggest topics within mental health and substance use and seek to strengthen reporting, drive change in their communities, and help reduce stigma through lived experience and in-depth storytelling.  

Carter Center U.S. fellows receive a $10,000 stipend in addition to 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 related to caregiving, research, and possible solutions to systemic challenges. 

Fellows will receive virtual training on effective behavioral health reporting from past fellows and advisors, connect with alumni, be paired with mentors, and gain a deep understanding of behavioral health.  

The Carter Center is pleased to welcome the 2025-2026 U.S. cohort for the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism:  

Alejandra Borunda 
Reporter, NPR 
Twitter/X: @alejandrabee_ 

Topic: Climate-fueled disasters, from wildfires to hurricanes to heat waves, are upending people’s lives in increasingly dramatic ways. Borunda will develop a series of stories that explore the different ways in which climate disasters, including the Los Angeles wildfires, Hurricane Helene, and the extreme heat in the American Southwest, take a mental toll on their communities.  

Biography: At NPR, Alejandra reports on how climate change impacts human health. Previously, she worked as a climate and environment reporter at National Geographic, where she wrote stories about Greenland's changing glaciers, how racial discrimination shaped the landscape of trees and shade across Los Angeles, and how climate change is stealing time from people's ice fishing seasons. She has a Ph.D. in earth and environmental science from Columbia University. 

Gray Chapman
Reporter, Freelance
Instagram: @grayhchapman

Topic: Chapman's longform magazine feature will explore the intersection of incarceration, opioid use disorder, and motherhood by centering the experiences of incarcerated mothers navigating addiction and recovery, and the interventions that can alter the trajectory of their lives.  

Biography: Gray Chapman has worked as a professional writer since 2011, and a freelance journalist since 2014. Her work has appeared in dozens of online and print outlets, including the New York Times, the Guardian, Atlanta Magazine, The Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, Communication Arts, and more. Chapman’s essays have been anthologized in two books: “Southern Women” (HarperCollins, October 2019) and “Why We Cook” (Workman Publishing, March 2021). In 2019, her coverage of Georgia’s abortion legislation won a Planned Parenthood Media Excellence Award.

Oliver Egger
Reporter, Freelance
Instagram: @ollieeggman

Topic: Egger will write a series of articles on how we remember the people housed in U.S. institutions, in particular asylums and state schools, and how these institutions’ abandoned physical campuses play a role in the modern understanding of those with mental illness and other disabilities.

Biography: Egger is a journalist, critic, poet, and editor based in New Haven, Connecticut. He is a contributing writer at The Boston Globe, and his work can be found in The Brooklyn Rail, The Florida Review, and The Hartford Courant. His reporting for the Globe on the abandonment of thousands of pages of confidential patient records at The Walter E. Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts, led to a civil rights investigation by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He is the current Kim-Frank Fellow in Creative Writing at Wesleyan University, where he is also an alumnus.

Joe Garcia
Reporter, CalMatters

Topic: Garcia will report on incarceration, rehabilitation, and the inner journeys of transformation within California’s prison system. Drawing from personal experience and in-depth interviews, he aims to shed light on the unseen emotional and psychological work of incarcerated people.

Biography: While serving a 21-year prison sentence in the California Department of Corrections, Garcia made a name for himself as a reporter for the San Quentin News and began an unexpected freelance journalism career. He served on the editorial board for SQNews, chaired the SQN Journalism Guild as an instructor, and published articles in the Sacramento Bee, Washington Post, MIT Tech Review, Alta Journal, and The New Yorker. Garcia was awarded the UC Berkeley 2024 Local News Fellowship, which included a full-time reporting position for CalMatters. He also received the Mellon Foundation’s 2025 Haymarket Writing Freedom Fellowship.

Julia Hotz
Reporter, Solutions Journalism Network
Instagram: @hotzthoughts
TikTok: @hotzthoughts

Topic: As rates of young people diagnosed with depression, anxiety, addiction, ADHD, and behavioral issues climb, so have rates of prescribing antidepressants and stimulants. This series will investigate the potential of social prescribing — healthcare referrals for non-medical, community-based activities, including the arts.

Biography: Julia Hotz is a solutions-focused journalist and award-winning author of The Connection Cure, a book chronicling the science, stories, and spread of social prescribing. She helps other journalists report on evidence-backed ideas at the Solutions Journalism Network, where she runs their mental health fellowship programs and previously hosted an award-winning newscast on Google, "Tell Me Something Good." Hotz has written for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Wired magazine, Scientific American, Bloomberg, and Time magazine. Her reporting has directly influenced public county health policy, inspired programming at the New York Fed, and was featured on the hit NBC series New Amsterdam. Hotz was also a Fulbright scholar.

Lottie Joiner
Reporter, Freelance
Instagram: @LottieJoiner

Topic: Joiner will explore the link between response to stress and childhood trauma, including what stress looks like for Black women — at work, at home and in the community, and Black women’s response to that stress.

Biography: Lottie Joiner is an award-winning multimedia journalist who explores the conditions and lived experiences of those in underserved and marginalized communities. She has published articles in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Guardian, Time.com and TheAtlantic.com, Ebony and Jet magazines, Essence, NBCBLK, The Undefeated, TheGrio and The Root. Joiner also hosted and produced the weekly Facebook Live show Crisis Conversations, which focused on how the pandemic impacted minority communities and the 2020 racial reckoning. She was also a 2015 Center for Health Journalism Fellow at USC Annenberg.

Marisa Kendall
Reporter, CalMatters
Instagram: @MarisaKendall

Topic: Kendall will delve into the link between mental health and homelessness in California, investigating some of the recent solutions endorsed by the state and local governments.  

Biography: Marisa Kendall is an award-winning journalist who reports on California's homelessness crisis for the statewide, nonprofit newsroom CalMatters. She previously covered housing and homelessness in the Bay Area for the Mercury News and influential Silicon Valley court cases for The Recorder. Kendall started her career covering crime and breaking news in Southwest Florida for the Fort Myers News-Press. She graduated from American University with a degree in literature. Marisa has won the California News Publishers Association and SPJ NorCal, she was also part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, covering the 2016 Ghost Ship fire.

Jess Mador
Reporter, WABE
Twitter/X: @jessicamador

Topic: As the Trump administration plans cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs, Atlanta VA officials say they fear big impacts to mental health services, including at the Women Veterans Program. This project will follow the fallout and shed light on impacts to female Georgia veterans, their families, and mental health-related maternal mortality prevention efforts for veterans.

Biography: Jess Mador is WABE’s health reporter. She follows public health issues, health policy, and health disparities and explores their impact on communities across the Atlanta region. In this role, she participates in the National Health Reporting Partnership between NPR and KFF Health News. Mador was a 2024 Reporting Fellow with the Association of Health Care Journalists and previously produced podcasts for Georgia Public Broadcasting. Mador also worked as a reporter, producer and editor at Ohio Public Radio station WYSO. She has reported stories for the nonprofit news outlet 100 Days in Appalachia, including a series tracing the impacts of opioids and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome on families and communities in East Tennessee.

Corinne Purtill - 2025-2026 Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Fellow
Reporter, Los Angeles Times
Instagram: @corinnepurtill_lat

Topic: Purtill’s stories will explore the factors behind the alarmingly high prevalence of suicide and suicidal ideation among autistic children, teens, and adults, and highlight groundbreaking emerging research into therapies, screening tools and interventions that support and validate neurodivergent individuals.

Biography: Corinne Purtill is a health and science reporter for The Los Angeles Times. Her writing on science and human behavior has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time, the BBC, and elsewhere. Before joining the Times in 2022, she worked as the senior London correspondent for GlobalPost (now PRI) and as a reporter and assignment editor at The Cambodia Daily in Phnom Penh. Her writing and reporting have been recognized by the California Journalism Awards, the Best of the West Awards, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and Best American Essays.

International Fellow for Mental Health and Climate Change

Hammad Sarfraz: 2025-2026 SNF Global Center Communicator Fellow (SNF Global Center at the Child Mind Institute) 
Reporter, The Express Tribune, Pakistan
Twitter/X: @hammadsarfraz

Topic: Climate change is reshaping lives in Pakistan beyond rising temperatures. In the north, harsher winters make farming, tourism, and daily wage labor impossible for months, leaving families without income. This economic paralysis is triggering a silent mental health crisis — suicide rates are rising as despair deepens. In the south, scorching summers and droughts are wiping out crops, forcing families into hunger and migration. As livelihoods vanish, mental health struggles are growing, yet these crises remain absent from the government's agenda. For young girls, the crisis is even more severe — many are pulled out of school and forced into marriage to ease their families’ financial burden after climate disasters.

Biography: For more than 15 years, Sarfraz has been on the frontlines of journalism, covering politics, foreign policy, and conflict. Now, as the head of original content and special reports, he leads a team of reporters across Pakistan, exposing stories that often go unheard, often with considerable impact. Sarfraz covered such topics as the lack of air quality monitoring in Pakistan’s most polluted cities, the glaring oversight of homeless and transgender individuals being denied vaccines because they lacked national ID cards, and public transportation accessibility issues. Sarfraz is part of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, a Reuters Institute initiative at the University of Oxford.

Learn more about the Carter Center's Georgia mental health program. 

Read about Rosalynn Carter’s 50 + years of mental health work.

Follow @CarterFellows on X for reporting from all Rosalynn Carter Fellows for Mental Health Journalism.

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Contact: media@cartercenter.org

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.