ABOUT THE CENTRE
The Discovery Centre for Health Journalism was established in October 2010 as a partnership between Rhodes University and Discovery Health. The Centre was officially opened in April 2011 and is located in the School of Journalism and Media Studies (JMS) at Rhodes University.
The Centre's role is to not only support journalists covering health and medical beats, including health systems and the NHI in South Africa, but to also drive forward journalism about medical science and healthy lifestyles, through a initiatives - including intensive participation in the curriculum of JMS. The Centre THUS offers full-time Honours and Masters degrees in Health Journalism and short courses for working journalists in the health journalism field.
STAFF
Director: Harry Dugmore
Harry is the inaugural Director of the Discovery Centre for Health Journalism. Harry has a long-standing interest in Health and Medical Journalism and in the media’s ability to influence health behaviours and shape health identities. In the 1990s, Harry co-wrote the first four seasons of the Soul City TV series and headed up the Soul City Radio writing team. Between 2002 and 2006, Harry was one of the coordinators of Khomanani, the then government’s HIV, AIDS and TB mass media communication campaign.
In 2007, Harry also created the On the Money finance behaviour change programme, which is still the largest financial education behaviour change programme in South Africa. On the Money draws heavily on public health-based theories of media and behaviour change.
Harry coordinated the research and development of two national long-range scenario-based strategic planning exercises for the South African Presidency, the 2014 Memories of the Future project (in 2002/3) and the 2025 The Future we Chose project (in 2007/8), both prepared for the Presidency's GCIS unit.
Over the past decade, in addition to his work for the Presidency, Harry has facilitated scenario-based strategic planning exercises for many companies and organisations, including the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Cape Town, the Legal Resources Centre, the Institute for Security Studies and various private companies and NGOs.
Harry is a Fellow of Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.
Harry was the MTN Chair of Media and Mobile Communication at Rhodes JMS before starting the Discovery Centre for Health Journalism. As part of the MTN Chair, Harry managed the R5millionIindaba Ziyafika project between 2009 and 2011. This project explored ways of creating a more participatory journalism in a digital and mobile age, and developed the Nika and NikaNOW software which is available for use by community media or conferences such as HighwayAFRICA.
Harry is currently on the steering committee of the HighwayAFRICA conference, the largest annual conference for African Journalists. He is also Deputy Chair of the Board of the David Rabkin Project for Experiential Journalism, which is the publisher of Grocott's Mail, South Africa's oldest independent newspaper.
In the late 1980s, Harry was part of the Editorial Team that created Laughing Stock, South Africa's first regular satirical magazine. He was also a regular feature writer for Living and Tribute Magazines. From 1992, Harry was part of the team that created the Madam & Eve cartoon strip with Stephen Francis and Rico Schacherl. In 1999 Harry co-authored the best-selling book Nelson Mandela – a life in cartoons. Combining his interest in humour and health behaviour change, Harry recently gave a TEDx Talk entitled The Laughing Child about health and other benefits of injecting more laughter into parenting.
Harry has a PhD in history from University of Witwatersrand where he was chair of the Postgraduate Association and Editor of both the Wits Student student newspaper and the Rag Magazine Wits Wits.
Harry can be contacted at h.dugmore@ru.ac.za.
Lecturer and project manager: Mia Malan
Mia Malan is currently Lecturer and Project Manager at the Centre. She was, until April 2011, a Knight Health Journalism Fellow. She has wide experience in television, radio and print journalism.
Mia has reported regularly on health issues for South African media houses including the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)and the Mail & Guardian for the past fifteen years. During this period she won numerous awards for her work, including the CNN Radio Journalist of the Year, the Henry.J. Kaiser Foundation’s Award for Excellence in Health Journalism and a Standard Bank Sikuvile Award in 2012. She was named a Reuters Foundation Journalism Fellow at Oxford University in 2001.
From 2003-2006 she established the first health journalism programme of the international media development organisation, Internews Network in Kenya. In middle 2006 she moved to the Internews head office in Washington, DC to become its Senior Health Journalism Advisor. During this period she helped to implement the training curricula that she developed in Kenya in several other countries, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, Haiti and Thailand. Mia has also worked as a consultant health journalism trainer in Iran and Namibia and the Czech Republic.
She’s edited two HIV journalism training manuals and has published on HIV and the media in theBrown Journal of World Affairs and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Mia has also widely presented international conferences on this subject and has published several book chapters on health issues.
Mia has a Master’s Degree in Science Journalism from the University of Stellenbosch.
Mia can be contacted at m.malan@ru.ac.za.
Web Master and PhD Student: Stanley Zvinaiye Tsarwe
Stanley graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree (English) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Zimbabwe.
On a Knight Foundation Sc holarship, he completed his MA in Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in 2011. His research examined how a community talk-back radio show produced by Citizen Journalists empoweredlocal citizens.
Stanley is currently registered as a PhD student with Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies looking at behaviour change communication in a digital and mobile age.
Stanley has previously worked as a correspondent for an Orphaned and Vulnerable Children’s magazine (OVC) in Zimbabwe from 2004 to 2006, profiling the situations and conditions that lead to vulnerability. This gave a platform for affected children to participate in the construction of a more just world -- where children’s basic rights such as rights to security, education, food, shelter and health are respected.
He has also worked as a Client Relationship Manager with Zimnat Life Assurance Company Zimbabwe Limited from 2007 to 2009. Prior to this, he worked as a Compliance Officer with Old Mutual Zimbabwe Limited from 2005 to 2007.
Stanley can be contacted at tsarwe@yahoo.co.uk.
