Adele Baleta (Module 1, 2 & 3 Lead author)

Adele is an award-winning science writer, editor, facilitator, and media consultant. She writes for several South African publications including Daily Maverick and Spotlight. Adele is a vaccine safety communications advisor to the WHO and a member of the South African Advisory Group on Vaccine Hesitancy. She has been a correspondent for the Lancet journals for over 20 years and has been published in the journal Vaccine as principal author. With a strong focus on health and human rights, she is passionate about bridging the gap between scientists and journalists and making science accessible to the public. She has facilitated training workshops in over 20 countries for, among others, the WHO, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Federation of Science Journalists.

Dr. Jaya Shreedhar (Module 5 author)

Jaya is Internews's Asia Health Media Advisor. An award-winning health and development journalist and medical doctor based in Chennai, India, she is experienced in print media, radio, television and digital media. Jaya specializes in public health reporting with a focus on human rights and health governance. From 2004-2008, Jaya was Resident Advisor, Internews India, leading the Internews Local Voices project in Chennai, an HIV journalism training program that helped journalists understand the science and tell compelling stories to reduce stigma. She is a consultant for international institutions including WHO and UNICEF and teaches public health journalism at the Asian College of Journalism.

Kate Thomas (Module 4 author)

Kate is a qualitative global health researcher, oral historian of epidemics, narrative medicine practitioner, and writer. She was part of the on-the-ground response to Ebola outbreaks in Liberia (2013-16) and in DR Congo (2019), supporting the Liberian and Congolese health ministries. She led the Internews post-Ebola media fellowship program in Liberia, “Information Saves Lives II,” guiding journalists to tell the public health story after Ebola. She was the founding editor of Ebola Deeply, a platform that The Guardian called “an antidote to media scaremongering.” Kate contributes to the COVID-19 response with a rich background in health, science, and human rights journalism.

Ida Jooste (Project lead)

Ida is Internews’ Global Health Media Adviser, who is a documentary maker, seasoned editor and media development manager, and winner of some 20 international and South African national journalism awards. She is the technical lead for the Internews health portfolio, guiding program design and implementation of areas like pandemic response, communicable diseases, universal health care and all other public health areas of concern. Her journalistic work has focused on governance and corruption, human rights, health, climate and environment issues and investigative and analytical storytelling, ensuring the concerns of citizens are addressed. As fellow of the Wits University Media&HIV program, she investigated audience responses to health media stories and health misinformation.

Many thanks to Sean Crozier for creating some of the graphics in this course.