Enter the Untold Global Health Stories of 2026 Contest

Toolbar items

Do you know an important global health story that’s been overlooked by the media and deserves special notice? 

The Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) and Global Health NOW from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are pleased to announce the 2026 Untold Stories of Global Health Contest. The contest is designed to give a platform to important but underreported global health stories. 

CUGH and GHN share the goal of raising awareness about health issues around the world. We invite you to nominate an issue you feel deserves urgent attention, whether you’ve worked on it firsthand or come across it in your travels. The best nominations for the Untold Stories focus on a specific issue in a specific location (i.e., not global chronic disease) and should include available data and evidence, as well as contact information. 

Nominations
Send us your ideas, and if we choose your issue, we’ll help you expand the audience for your issue. Submit your nomination here, with a short (150-word) statement describing the story and why it deserves more coverage and support. 

Important Dates
Submissions Open – October 21, 2025
Nominations Deadline – November 24, 2025
Judging Complete/Winners Notified– December 12, 2025*
*Winners will be announced publicly at the CUGH awards ceremony in April 2026 in Washington, DC

Judging
The contest will be jointly judged by CUGH and GHN, based on the entries’ newsworthiness, creativity and feasibility for coverage. 

Winners
GHN will select two winning stories to cover; the stories will appear in GHN. At least 6 runners up will also be recognized. All winning entries will be shared on CUGH's website and bulletin.

Prizes

• The winner will be announced publicly at the CUGH conference taking place in Washington, DC, April 9-12, 2026.
• Runners-up will have short summaries included on the GHN website.
• The winners (maximum of 1 nominee per entry) will receive free registration for the CUGH conference. 

Previous Winners

GHN and CUGH began collaborating on the Untold Stories Contest in 2015; from 2016-2020, NPR’s Goats and Soda blog joined our effort to lift up underreported stories around the world. Here’s a snapshot of all of our winning nominees so far:

2025: Grand prize winners: The Hidden Crisis of Unsafe Abortions in Tanzania, submitted by Doreen Smart, and Latinas seeking cancer care in California’s Central Valley, submitted by Katherine Quibell 

Honorable mention winners: 

Hazards faced by firecracker workers in Sivakasi, India, nominated by Padmavathy Krishna Kumar, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health‘

• Invisible Suffering’: Deadly Risks in India’s Fireworks Factories & Fireworks and Heartbreak in a Hard-Hit Indian Village 

Making Zambia a Dental Amalgam-Free Country, nominated by: Michael Musenga, Environmental Health Practitioner Children's Environmental Health Foundation, Livingstone, Zambia

• Zambia Drags Heels on Mercury Amalgam Ban, by Kennedy Phiri and Freddie Clayton

2024: Grand prize winners: Missing limbs, missing voices: The Forgotten Amputees of Solomon Islands, submitted by Dylan Bush and  The other mental hospital: experiences of people living with severe mental illness in drug rehabilitation ‘annexes’ in Chiapas, Mexico, submitted by Miguel Angel, Dominguez Hernandez General Practitioner, Compañeros en Salud - Partners in Health Mexico. 

Honorable mention winners: 

Drowning Prevention in Uganda, Where Drowning Deaths Are Amongst the Highest in the World, nominated by Kyra Guy, PhD Candidate, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. 

• The Push to Prevent Drownings in Uganda, by Esther Nakkazi, a science journalist based in Uganda.

2023: Grand prize winners:  The devastating health effects of landmines in Zimbabwe, nominated by Misja Ilcisin and Chronic Mountain Sickness: A forgotten disease of the Andean Highlands, submitted by Dulce Alarcón-Yaquetto. 

• The Mystery of Chronic Mountain Sickness in the Andes by Lucien Chauvin, a freelance journalist from the U.S. based in Lima, Peru.

Honorable mention winners: 

• Hospital Detention in Nigeria, nominated by Beverly Anaele, Thomas Jefferson University, Upper Marlboro, MD, U.S.
  In Nigeria, Hospitals Are Unlawfully Detaining Newborns to Force Payment of Medical Bills by Abiodun Jamiu

• Surgical Care in Western Tanzania Refugee Camps, nominated by Alexander Blum, MD, MPH, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, U.S.
  Socialized for Scarcity: Surgical Care in Tanzania’s Remote Refugee Camps (commentary) by Alexander Blum and Zachary Obinna Enumah

• Decolonize Global Health Fellowships, nominated by Rebecca Fujimura, MD, Contra Costa/ University of California San Francisco
  Fortify the Frontlines with Fellowships for LMIC Docs (commentary) by Rebecca Fujimura, Arlene Mugisha, and Joelle Bukeneza

• Most Neglected NTD: Cryptosporidium, nominated by Wes Van Voorhis, professor, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, U.S.
  The Most Neglected NTD: Cryptosporidiosis (commentary) by Timothy A. Rapuano, MS, Nede A. Ovbiebo, Allison M.L. Crawford, MSc, Beatrice Amadi, MD, and Wesley C. Van Voorhis, MD, PhD.

 2022: Grand prize winner:  The risks to adolescent girls in Kenya and the denial of rights-based, factual, and culturally appropriate information about their reproductive health, nominated by Roopal Thaker.

Honorable mention winners:  

• The Unfinished Story of Red Palm Oil as a Source of Vitamin A and Women’s Income in West Africa, nominated by Hélène Delisle, professor emeritus, a University of Montréal, Canada 
  Delicious and Nutritious: The Unrealized Potential of Red Palm Oil by Abiodun Jamiu

2020: The need for evidence-based protocols for the treatment of stroke in low- and middle-income countries, nominated by Mariet Benade (Global Health NOW’s winner) and Aging with HIV in Kenya, nominated by Eunice Kilonzo (NPR’s Goats and Soda’s winner)

2019: Improving autism diagnosis in Turkey, nominated by Hikmet Ceyhun Göcenoğlu (Global Health NOW’s winner) and the impact of light on the quality of care that health workers deliver, nominated by Beth Ann Eanelli (NPR’s Goats and Soda’s winner)

2018: Hemophilia in developing countries, nominated by Chris Bombardier (Global Health NOW’s winner) and the recruitment of children in Colombia for cocaine production, proposed by Athena Madan (NPR’s Goats and Soda’s winner)

2017: The hidden crisis of burns in Nepal, nominated by Emaline Laney, (Global Health NOW’s winner) and deafness in developing countries, proposed by Christi Batamula and Matthew Yau  (NPR’s Goats and Soda’s winner)

2016: The paralytic disease konzo, submitted by Desire Tshala-Katumbay (Global Health NOW’s winner), and infection-related cancers in the developing world, nominated by Susan Keown (NPR’s Goats and Soda’s winner)

2015: The chronic inflammatory disease mycetoma, nominated by University of Toronto students Annie Liang and Simran Dhunna (Global Health NOW winner)

About the Sponsors

About CUGH:
Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) builds interdisciplinary collaborations and facilitates the sharing of knowledge to address global health challenges. It assists members in sharing their expertise across education, research, and service. It is dedicated to creating equity and reducing health disparities everywhere. CUGH promotes mutually beneficial, long-term partnerships between universities in resource-rich and resource-poor countries, developing human capital and strengthening institutions' capabilities to address these challenges. It is committed to translating knowledge into action. 

About Global Health NOW: 
Global Health NOW from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is a free news service designed to inform the global health agenda, delivering the day’s most interesting and essential news every weekday. We aggregate and summarize the latest global health news, and publish original news stories and commentaries with leading global health experts. Subscribe to Global Health NOW for free: www.globalhealthnow.org/subscribe