Mia Malan

Mia Malan is the founding director and editor of Bhekisisa, the Mail & Guardian’s health journalism center covering health issues across Africa. Under her leadership, Bhekisisa expanded from three to 20 permanent and freelance staff members within four years. Prior to starting Bhekisisa in 2013, Malan was a Knight Health Journalism Fellow in South Africa. She specializes in narrative science journalism and is the recipient of more than 30 African journalism awards, including the including CNN Multichoice African Features Journalist of the Year in 2016, Discovery Health Journalist of the Year in 2013 and 2016 and Standard Bank Sikuvile Newspaper Journalist of the Year in 2015. She began her journalism career at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, where she worked as a radio and television health reporter. She later established the first health journalism program of Internews Network, an international media development organization, in Kenya. Malan headed up the Kenya program for three and a half years before moving to the Internews head office in Washington, DC, where she served as a senior health journalism adviser. During this period, she helped to implement the training curricula she had developed in Kenya in several other countries including Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, Haiti and Thailand. Malan has a master’s degree in science journalism from the University of Stellenbosch and was a Reuters Foundation Medical Journalism Fellow at Oxford University in 2001.