Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
Anna Hu has joined Mississippi Today as the newsroom’s first reporting fellow focused on mental health and underserved communities.
After growing up in New Jersey and earning her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Wellesley College, she researched infectious diseases, focusing on malaria, as a laboratory assistant at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Then, Hu discovered the power of storytelling and fell in love with local journalism. She worked as a reporter at the bilingual Sampan Newspaper and as a digital video intern at WGBH, a public media news outlet in Boston.
Hu said she finds it fulfilling to combine her experience in the lab and the newsroom to make health information more timely and accessible for the public through investigative and accountability journalism.
“People need trustworthy reporting to help them when systems are so complicated and so broken a lot of the time,” Hu said. “I’d be really excited to contribute to that and really provide a service that makes these issues local and allows them to make sense for the people most affected.”
The fellowship, established through the Sarah Yelena Haselhorst Fund for Health Journalism, creates an opportunity for a journalist to explore issues in mental health, maternal health and underserved communities across Mississippi. The fund was named after Sarah Haselhorst, a journalist who was passionate about storytelling and shedding light on the factors that influenced and perpetuated health disparities in Mississippi. After Haselhorst died in 2024 at age 31, her family created the fund in her honor.
Through the fellowship, the work that fueled Haselhorst’s drive as a journalist continues. Issues tied to the stability of rural hospitals, access to reproductive health care and longstanding inequities “in Mississippi and the country are shaping people’s daily lives,” Hu said. Amid rapidly developing news, Hu said she wants to deliver coverage that goes beyond what’s happening and explains why it matters and who is going to be affected.
“I want my journalism to be very grounded in people’s experiences and to be accessible and accountable to the public,” she said.
Hu’s arrival comes at a critical time for monitoring mental health access and disparities across the state, said Laura Santhanam, health editor for Mississippi Today. At the federal level, many parts of Congress’ so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” have gone into effect, but further cuts to Medicaid and food assistance are slated to continue. In Mississippi, the Legislature has written laws that could transform a range of mental health care resources statewide.
“We are thrilled and thankful for Anna to join the team, and we need her passion and ideas to meet the moment we’re in,” Santhanam said.
Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Emily Wagster Pettus said she and other newsroom leaders are grateful to Sarah Haselhorst’s parents, Melissa Stanza and Alan Haselhorst, for their financial support of journalism that will carry on their daughter’s legacy.
“We are confident that Anna’s journalistic work at Mississippi Today will be a valuable service to readers, just as Sarah’s was at The Clarion-Ledger and in other newsrooms where she worked,” Pettus said.
