Pandemics – from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19: Why media reports matter

Thanks to our collaboration with the Pulitzer Center, we have the honor of virtually hosting Kalpana Jain, an award-winning global health and religion journalist.  She has written extensively on poverty, gender justice, healthcare and Hindu nationalism. Her reporting at The Times of India played a significant role in elevating public health as an important topic of news coverage in India and led to many policy changes. She was the first journalist in India to give a face to the HIV/AIDS epidemic through her book Positive Lives, published by Penguin in 2002. She was a 2009 Nieman fellow at Harvard in Global Health Reporting.

In these COVID-19 pandemic days, Ms. Jain will discuss the crucial role of media and why she has covered public health for more than 20 years for The Times of India. We will learn about the challenge of providing balanced and accurate health coverage when gender and religion are important factors, as with AIDS. With the second-largest population in the world and projected to become the largest within a few years, understanding India’s health system and disparities is critical to our global health knowledge.

Kalpana Jain currently oversees religion coverage as senior ethics and religion editor, at The Conversation US, a global news website, that has partnerships with the Associated Press and Religion News Service. She will share the unique understanding she has of both of these worlds.