The Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism is an independent media organisation that specialises in narrative, solutions journalism focusing on health and social justice issues across Africa. Its stories are distributed through News24, the Daily Maverick, Financial Mail, the Mail & Guardian, TimesLIVE, Sowetan, SABC News and DispatchLIVE, reaching policymakers, academics, activists and political leaders, often resulting in shifts in policy, setting national agendas and defining conversations.
Trained in evidence-based journalism, its reporters and editors use peer-reviewed journal studies and reliable statistics to support the narratives in its stories. As a donor-funded journalism centre, it hosts media trainings for journalists and civil society, as well as public discussion forums on health issues, bringing together policymakers and specialist audiences. It also produces a monthly TV show, Health Beat, which is published on its website and YouTube channel. Health Beat is also aired on eNCA and posted on eNCA’s YouTube channel. One of Bhekisisa’s objectives is to create a new generation of health journalists in South Africa. Reporters receive extensive mentoring in writing and interpreting science to prepare them for a career in health journalism. All journalists who began their careers at Bhekisisa and have moved to other publications have continued to practise health journalism.
Bhekisisa, isiZulu for “to scrutinise,” began as the Mail & Guardian’s health desk in 2013. When it became an independent organisation in July 2019, it was the newspaper’s largest specialist desk, with seven full-time staff members. Between 2013 and 2019, the publication’s online readership for health stories grew 35-fold, and its staff won 35 African journalism awards, including the Discovery Health Journalist of the Year (2013, 2014, 2016, 2018), the overall winner of the Standard Bank Sikuvile Newspaper Journalist of the Year (2015), the CNN African Features Journalist of the Year (2016), the Standard Bank Sikuvile Features (2014, 2015, 2016, 2018) and the Standard Bank Sikuvile Columns/Editorial Journalist of the Year (2018). Today, Bhekisisa has 20 full and part-time staff members.
