Growing up in England as the child of Guyanese immigrants, my head was always full of questions for my parents: What made my Dad decide to get on a ship to England as a 17-year-old to join the Royal Air Force?
What was it like to travel halfway across the world to make a new life? How did it feel to trade warm Caribbean sunshine for cold, grey London skies? Did they miss the food that they’d grown up eating every day?
Like many migration stories, it turns out that there were ups and downs. Yes, 1960s England brought new opportunities, fast friendships and the beginning of their own young family. But the thousands of Caribbean residents invited to help rebuild post-war Britain – known as the Windrush generation – also had to endure racial discrimination and economic hardship while being thousands of miles away from supportive family networks and familiar culture.
I was drawn to journalism because I wanted to tell the stories I never heard or read. I’ve spent my almost three decades as a social justice journalist exploring aspects of — and solutions to — social exclusion. From refugees and asylum seekers, to at-risk women and teens, to unhoused individuals, these are people whose stories are often misrepresented, marginalized, or ignored. I’ve worked with outlets like The Guardian, HuffPost and Al Jazeera because they give you the space and time to tell a story in a way that respects and reflects the person sharing their experience.
When I moved from London to San Francisco in 2013, I was struck by the diversity of the San Francisco Bay Area which reminded me a little of home. But I also started to discover that some communities and their challenges just weren’t being represented in the media I was reading or listening to.
The double whammy of Covid-19 and increased anti-Asian hate crime during the pandemic deepened the mental health needs of AANHPI (American Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander) communities across the Bay Area. It also exposed the need for systemic change in mental healthcare, from culturally-tailored services, to more investment in a bilingual and bicultural workforce.
Back in 2021, I was reporting on health inequities in East Palo Alto, as part of my work as a KALW Audio Academy Fellow, when I discovered something that really surprised me. The Bay Area is home to the largest Tongan population in the state, and to one in five of California’s Pacific Islanders. Yet research shows that these communities are the least likely of any racial or ethnic group to report mental health issues, or to seek out mental health services.
And a big part of the problem is culturally-appropriate, language-specific support, and stigma in these communities about mental health. This subject is taboo – stigmatized, not discussed, ignored. Today’s seniors in those communities grew up without the language or practical support they need to recognize symptoms, articulate their feelings, or access help.
When I examined the excellent research from AAPI Data & UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research into the mental health experiences of California’s AANHPI population, it was clear that certain communities in the Bay Area were falling through the cracks. Because traditional public health services did not understand them, and were failing them.
So, that got me thinking. Were there any local, grassroots solutions to AANHPI mental health that were really working? And by reporting on these solutions, could these approaches be replicated or scaled up elsewhere, to provide the culturally-appropriate support so obviously needed by these communities?
Public media plays a crucial role in the wider discourse around public health by really getting to the heart of local health challenges. It does this by elevating voices that may not always be heard, questioning the status quo, and highlighting solutions – often scrappy or untested – that are really working. The deep community engagement that local public media journalists bring to their reporting not only surfaces untold stories; it can also help to engage listeners and connect them more closely to their communities.
Thanks to support from USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism, KALW commissioned me to produce a three-part series to explore these issues more deeply. With this help, I embarked on a reporting journey that took me to East Palo Alto, then Oakland and back to San Francisco.
During and after lockdown, mainstream media had (quite rightly) focused on youth mental health – the impact of hours of online schooling and the lack of social interaction. But it struck me that AANHPI seniors were a complex group that had been overlooked and underserved. With families out all day or busy on Zoom calls, they were experiencing loneliness, anxiety from hate crime, and faced language barriers that stopped them from accessing mental health services.
I’m a San Francisco-based journalist from England, with no connections to these communities. So I had to start from scratch: introducing myself to community groups in person; attending their meetings and events; building trust and mutual understanding by explaining my reporting; and showing them stories that I had done previously.
I met people where they wanted to be, from community center ballroom dance classes, to cultural events, to a Zoom chair yoga class being broadcast on Radio Tonga to the diaspora! These were some of the places that seniors felt most comfortable.
This deep engagement and direct approach paid dividends. These communities are often uncomfortable with or wary of mainstream media. Building up relationships, being a familiar face at events and keeping people posted about my reporting via email and Zoom helped to break down barriers, build up trust, and encourage open conversation.
My aim for this series was to represent the mental health experiences of AANHPI seniors in the most authentic and respectful way possible. My interviewees had powerful stories to tell and their voices steered my reporting. Papa Senita is a survivor of PTSD having been injured in a drive-by shooting. But he is also a talented musician with a wealth of travel stories to tell, and it is this that has connected him to mental wellness support for his community. Elaine’s husband dies by suicide, prompting her to set up a mental health nonprofit. But she is also a mother, a singer, an activist who has experienced depression.
Providing wider context and effective solutions was also important to understanding these stories. For the final part of the series, Hana Baba – presenter on KALW’s flagship magazine program, Crosscurrents – interviews Dr. Helen Hsu, founder of Hella Mental Health and outreach director at Stanford University. Dr. Hsu discusses solutions to stigma around mental health, including examples of holistic approaches: a California program that integrated Hmong shamans into hospital so staff can learn about what kind of spiritual and cultural practices help people feel better and heal better, and the Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Centre on Oahu which combines health, dental and mental health professionals, a Kupuna elder council for advice, and a healing garden.
I’m thrilled that my KALW series has just won a Mental Health America 2025 Media Award, and I’ll be speaking more about my reporting process at their conference in Washington, DC this October.
Community-informed reporting is more important than ever. Amplifying under-reported voices or marginalized communities helps us to redefine the narrative. They are center-stage, shaping the conversation. And in doing so, a wider audience understands the challenges that our local communities face on a local level. From state and federal policy makers to foundations and donors, these stories can help shift thinking and shape action.
With cuts to mental health services and the erosion of DEI work on the horizon, public media matters more than ever before. It’s about uncovering challenges, highlighting solutions, and providing a platform for those who don’t get the coverage they deserve from mainstream media.When I joined the Audio Academy in 2015 (KALW’s renowned audio training program), I learned more about the Bay Area in nine months than in the three years I had lived here prior. Each day started with a conversation about news from around the Bay. It was driven by us — total newbies — and not the many experienced journalists working in the newsroom. We brought our perspectives and lived experiences to the discussion, sharing what we paid attention to and how we made sense of what was happening here.
In some ways, this small reversal of roles is one of the most radical things KALW does to listen and uplift new voices in our journalism. The question I hear most often about editorial bias is not whether journalists are telling a story factually, but which stories are being covered and why. Who is at the center of the story? Those are choices that reporters and editors have to make every day, sometimes with a great deal of thought and intention, and sometimes without realizing it. It’s hard to hold all the nuance while also offering something easy to follow, clear, and straightforward.
So, how do we interrogate that? At KALW, we build on the foundations of journalism, while being unafraid to try new things – always asking, why? When we shift our practices slightly, like we do with our morning call, we create space for new ideas and new questions that help us challenge our assumptions about what we do.
In the ten years I’ve worked in public media, I have learned that it takes hard work to expand and strengthen connections when people don’t feel well-represented. We have to build new pathways and structures. One way that KALW has done that is by investing in training; in-house, in high schools, and in three prisons across the state — so far. But our efforts to be more inclusive and accessible go beyond audio journalism training. We host live events, partner with local community organizations, and we simply ask. We ask you what you care most about so that we can shape what we do in a way that reflects the multifaceted history and culture of our region.
At KALW, I found a community of people who care deeply about the world around them, starting with the place they call home. Journalists and artists who approach their work with genuine curiosity and compassion. It is here that I learned that the most important thing about being a good reporter is to be a good listener.
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This piece was brought to you by KALW Speaks, a monthly series of essays from KALW staff and contributors, exploring the ideas that drive our work. Each of these essays reflect our commitment to innovation and invites you into a deeper conversation about the future of public media.
Learn more: From A Whisper To A Roar.
