It’s been a big year for Healthy NewsWorks. We’ve grown in size: Student participants (1,700+), school partners (20), and staff (9). Take a look back at our 2024 highlights before we dive into 2025!
Winter
The year began with AstraZeneca awarding Healthy NewsWorks with a Community Solutions Challenge award for the second year in a row through their Accelerate Change Together (ACT) on Health Equity initiative.
Healthy NewsWorks reporters completed special interviews with health, media, and community leaders, including enterprise executive vice president at Jefferson Hospital, Keith Leaphart; TV host, writer, podcaster, and producer Baratunde Thurston; and reporter, journalist, and dean Arlene Morgan. A half dozen newspaper teams worked on video projects that grew out of their reporting. MaST Community Charter School reporters even turned their comic strips into public health videos.
Spring
In April, we published our Spring magazine, which included stories around the 2023-24 school year theme “Caring for Our Community and Ourselves.” Topics included kindness, swim safety, and anti-violence efforts.
We also screened our award-winning film “How We Heal” as part of a community workshop about children’s social, emotional, and developmental health needs sponsored by Children First.
To celebrate the end of the school year, we hosted a block party at the Discovery Center where we were joined by families and Healthy NewsWorks friends. They participated in a variety of activities such as hula hooping, learning about cartooning, and throwing footballs with NFL players.
Summer
While our students were on break, Healthy NewsWorks was growing behind the scenes. We added three new staff members. Steve Riggs, who has 30 years of classroom teaching experience, joined the staff as a program associate. John LaChine is our first-ever chief of staff and Meg Gladieux became our communications associate.
Over the course of the year, Healthy NewsWorks partnered with Colegio Nueva Granada International School in Bogota, Colombia, and in June, our international correspondents’ work was posted on By Kids, For Kids.
Fall
With the start of the new school year, we distributed our Fall magazine, which included a story about an indoor garden at one of our partner schools, Cole Manor Elementary School. Cole Manor started its 19th consecutive year publishing its Healthy Comet newspaper.
Healthy NewsWorks also received a three-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which will support our continued expansion into South Jersey.
In October, we also welcomed a new member to our board, Blair Jones, senior finance director at Comcast, and welcomed back Omar Joseph, a marketing and communications executive on MetLife’s Group Benefits Marketing team. Omar stepped away from the board earlier in the year to serve as interim chief of staff.
The fall also marked the beginning of partnerships with a number of new schools, including Chester Charter Scholars Academy in the city of Chester and Alexander Adaire, Julia de Burgos, and Isaac A. Sheppard Elementary Schools, all in Philadelphia. Holy Name and St. Cecilia Schools formed Core Reporting teams to expand the staffs of the Catholic Partnership Schools Healthy Courier in Camden and Pennsauken.
Thank you to everyone who supported Healthy NewsWorks in 2024. We’re looking forward to an even bigger 2025. Cheers to the new year!
