The Global Health NOW news website and newsletter, published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has launched its first-ever crowdfunding campaign. It will run this week through Monday, Oct. 4.
The crowdfunding campaign's goal is to build resources to support ambitious future plans that include expanding news coverage of under-reported health issues; building a network of skilled local journalists; and creating greater awareness of solutions to health problems. The campaign has had a robust response thus far—by Thursday afternoon, it was within 10% of its goal of attracting 500 donors.
"Our readership increased by nearly 70% from just before the pandemic to now. We want to position ourselves to deliver more value to our growing readership," says GHN editor-in-chief Brian W. Simpson. "There's a real hunger out there for accurate information across a vast range of global public health issues—and not just about COVID-19."
For more than seven years, the website and free weekday newsletter has delivered essential news and views to anyone interested in global health. You can subscribe for free on the GHN website. The "smartly curated" newsletter has attracted a passionate community of more than 50,000 readers in more than 170 countries.
The GHN team sees the crowdfunding campaign as another way of engaging its readers in the publication's mission.
"GHN's readers are a lively presence in our work," managing editor Dayna Kerecman Myers says. "They send us tips and ideas, shaping our efforts to find stories the mainstream media might ignore and the voices that deserve a wider platform."
In addition to being a one-stop shop for U.S. and global public health news, GHN publishes original news articles on topics such as the hopes of Indigenous midwives in Nunavik; attacks on health care workers; Liberia's fight against COVID-19; and hemophilia in Kenya.
GHN also publishes commentaries and other pieces by global health experts including Africa CDC director John Nkengasong, former U.S. CDC director Tom Frieden, science writer Laurie Garrett, Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton, and global health leader Ilona Kickbusch.
"One thing that won't change after the campaign," says associate editor Annalies Winny, "is the publication's mission to share important global health news with anyone, anywhere, at no cost."
Posted in Health
Tagged global health
