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HIV/AIDS Reporting — Funded Assignment

Rural Kentucky: HIV, Harm Reduction, and the Gaps in Care

Queer Kentucky is accepting pitches for a funded HIV/AIDS reporting project focused on rural Kentucky. We have assignments available for experienced journalists and storytellers ready to cover HIV and AIDS across the state, with a specific focus on closing the reporting gaps that exist for rural queer communities, including BIPOC queer people in rural and Appalachian Kentucky.

This is not a call for awareness content or institutional summaries. We want reported journalism that meets people where they are and makes complicated realities legible to a general audience.

What We Want to Cover

Strong pitches will address one or more of the following:

• Access to HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and long-term care in rural Kentucky, and the specific barriers that rural and low-income communities face
• Organizations doing harm reduction, testing, and treatment navigation outside of major urban centers, including the informal networks that keep people alive and connected when formal systems fall short
• Harm reduction as a survival strategy in rural Kentucky, including how stigma, criminalization, and underfunding shape who gets access and who doesn’t
• The intersections of race, poverty, criminalization, and HIV stigma in rural and Appalachian communities
• Policy and funding at the state and local level, told with data and with the people most affected at the center
• The impact of federal and state policy decisions on health access in rural Kentucky, including what cuts to Medicaid, HIV prevention funding, harm reduction programs, and the closing of health facilities mean on the ground for queer communities
• Rural infrastructure gaps: providers, pharmacies, transportation, and what it takes to stay in care when the system isn’t built for you
• Stories at the intersection of queer identity and Appalachian or rural life, including personal and community histories connected to the AIDS crisis and its long aftermath

We are open to unexpected and out-of-the-box reported angles. If you have an approach that doesn’t fit neatly into the above but speaks to the same communities and stakes, pitch it.

Format and Compensation

Length 500 to 800 words. Deeply reported pieces with additional scope may be negotiated at a higher rate. Make the case in your pitch.	Rate $150 to $250 per story
Publication Digital. Published online and shared across all platforms and with our republishing partners.	Deadline Rolling. This is an ongoing project.