Investigative and General Reporting Award
The NIHCM Foundation Investigative and General Reporting Award recognizes excellence in reporting that can help health plans, policymakers, health care delivery, health care consumers, and related stakeholders improve the affordability, accessibility, and quality of US health care.
Application Information
The application cycle for the 32nd Annual Investigative and General Reporting Award is now closed. Finalists will be announced this spring.
Please contact Mikayla Thompson at mthompson@nihcm.org with any questions.
32nd Annual Investigative and General Reporting Award Process
(formerly General Circulation Award)
Prize
A $20,000 prize will be presented to the winner.
Have questions about our Investigative and General Reporting Award?
Award FAQEligibility
- Articles or stories must originally have been published during the calendar year 2025.
- Entry can be either an individual story or a series. Stories must be advertised and disseminated as an official series in order to be submitted as one entry.
- Entries will be accepted from national newspapers, magazines, websites, and nonprofit news organizations. Entries produced by a local media outlet and principally focused on a local or statewide market should instead apply in the Local Media Award category.
- All entries should include a focus on health care affordability, including increasing knowledge of the drivers and impacts of rising health care costs, or identifying solutions to improve health care access and quality. Entries should produce new insights that are relevant to health plans, policymakers, health care delivery, and/or related stakeholders.
- All entries should focus on health care in the United States.
Entry
- Deadline: February 3, 2026 at 11:59 pm ET
- Entry is free
- Limit three entries per entrant. Please see the FAQs for more information.
- An article or series can only be submitted to one category.
- Please contact Mikayla Thompson at mthompson@nihcm.org if you are unable to submit or have any questions.
Selection Criteria
- Quality, originality, and creativity of reporting.
- Entry produces new insights or impact that can inform efforts to improve health care affordability, including by increasing knowledge of the drivers and impacts of rising health care costs, or identifying solutions to improve health care access and quality.
- Entries should produce new insights that are relevant to health plans, policymakers, health care delivery, and/or related stakeholders.
Judges
Yoohyun Jung
The Boston Globe
Clifton Leaf
Columbia Journalism School
Michael Millenson
Caitlin Owens
Axios
Fred Schulte
KFF Health News
Christopher Weaver
The Wall Street Journal
Derek Willis
University of Maryland