Student Receives 2025 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship.
Student Receives 2025 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship
MPH student Erin Johnston will visit the UK to report on the efforts of neurodivergent researchers to improve access to timely diagnosis and care.
Erin Johnston, a 2025 Master of Public Health student, has been named a 2025 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow.
The Pulitzer fellowship program is part of a long-standing collaboration between the School of Public Health, the Boston University College of Communication, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting through BU’s Program for Global Health Storytelling. Pulitzer fellows explore the intersection of journalism and public health while developing a multimedia project on an underreported health crisis.
This year, Johnston was selected along with COM student Shandra Back, whose reporting from the Dominican Republic will explore how national and international policy decisions are fueling record levels of deportation in the bateyes of San Pedro de Macorí, a collection of informal settlements surrounding sugarcane plantations where a large number of Haitian migrant workers and stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent have long lived under threat of xenophobia and racial discrimination. Photos and a short narrative podcast featuring the voices of batey residents and community leaders will complement Back’s longform article.
Johnston, who studies health communication and promotion at SPH, will report from the opposite side of the Atlantic for her project titled, “Agents of Change for the Neurodivergent Community in the United Kingdom.” By speaking with researchers who themselves identify as neurodivergent, Johnston writes that she “aims to understand how people, places, and systems are creating space and support for the neurodiverse community in the UK.”
According to National Health Service (NHS), the UK’s publicly funded healthcare system, neurodiversity is the recognition that the human population is made up of a diversity of different brains. Most people express themselves in common ways that form the basis for societal norms and may be described as “neurotypical,” but a minority group—an estimated 1 in 7 people in the UK—differ neurologically from the norm and may be termed “neurodivergent.” The NHS classifies neurodivergent conditions as disabilities, entitling those diagnosed to certain health and care services.
“A lot of times the world was created not for neurodivergent people and that’s why I think there’s a lot of stigma and a lot of misconceptions and a lot of misunderstanding,” says Johnston, who identifies as neurodivergent herself. “[Neurodivergence] is just a different way of thinking, a different way of perceiving the world. And that can make things really difficult and that can also make things really wonderful.”
Johnston notes that neurodivergence often means something a little bit different to everyone, but many neurodivergent individuals agree on the need for support to help them thrive. “[My] hope is that, when I’m able to talk to people, [I can] ask them, ‘What does it mean for you to be neurodivergent?’” she says.
Johnston’s experience living with obsessive compulsive disorder inspired her to study psychology as an undergraduate at Stonehill College. After graduating, she took a job in a psychiatric facility working with children with autism and developmental disabilities, as well as neurodivergent teenagers. There, she witnessed firsthand how a lack of post-diagnostic support—particularly for individuals who age out of youth healthcare facilities and are placed in adult facilities—contributes to inequities in health outcomes.
With more than 200,000 patients currently awaiting assessments for autism alone in the UK, delays in diagnosis—and subsequently, in post-diagnostic healthcare—are not problems unique to the U.S., Johnston says. But where the NHS has fallen short, she has found that some neurodivergent individuals are taking the initiative to help others like themselves.
During the first stop of her upcoming reporting trip, Johnston will visit two London-based institutions at the forefront of efforts to provide solutions for neurodivergent people by neurodivergent people: the Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE) at University College London (UCL) and Kanjo, an AI-driven, health-tech startup providing pre-clinical evaluations for ADHD, autism, and their comorbidities to aid parents in getting timely, accurate care for their children. Johnston will meet with Sophia Parvizi-Wayne, Kanjo founder and CEO; Brian Irvine, UCL CRAE research fellow; and others like them to examine and document their contributions as change-makers in the neurodivergent community.
Determined to become an advocate for the neurodivergent community at large, Johnston first enrolled at SPH to connect with others in the global mental health space. As an MPH student, she learned to channel her passion and apply her expertise to craft effective public health communications. In classes like Mass Communication and Public Health (SB733)—under the instruction of Jennifer Ross, associate professor of health law, policy and management—Johnston and her peers developed a media campaign to promote gun control in Texas, for example. This past spring, Johnston rekindled her lifelong love for writing in Global Health Storytelling (PH701), a course on journalism for public health co-taught by Jennifer Beard, clinical associate professor of global health, and John Baynard, master lecturer in the Department of Journalism at the BU College of Communication. She credits Beard with encouraging her to apply to the Pulitzer Center fellowship.
Beard recalls recommending that Johnston choose a topic with which she has a personal connection and that, if possible, she do some reporting for her application itself. The next time the pair spoke, Beard says, Johnston already had contacts in London. “That’s when I knew her application would be strong,” Beard says. “[Johnston] personifies the type of public health student we hope will enroll in the Global Health Storytelling class. She had limited experience with reporting and has focused most of her energy in recent years on academic and technical writing. In our class, she embraced all the new skills she was learning—photography, video, interviewing, descriptive writing, et cetera. I am inspired by [her] enthusiasm!”
Johnston hopes her story will underscore the importance of self-advocacy and the power in wielding one’s individual lived experience to uplift one’s community. “I think, in this space particularly, it’s important for people with the lived experience of being neurodivergent to be spearheading the efforts,” she says. “And I’ve never been to London, so I’m just excited to be in a new place and [to] talk to the people who are doing the work.”
Caroline Dignard (SPH’24), a former writing fellow at SPH’s Public Health Post, received the Pulitzer fellowship last year. Dignard traveled to Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost province, to report on indigenous food sovereignty, including efforts to sustain traditional Inuit hunting and fishing practices. The results of her reporting are forthcoming.
