Hala Nasar, a social media journalist at The National, has been awarded a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in the UAE for 2026-27.
Nasar is the host of the popular How to Adult series for The National, which is distributed across video, audio and social platforms. The series helps young adults to navigate modern life, from budgeting and managing stress to finding a place to live and shopping hacks for healthier eating.
She will spend her fellowship year developing and recording a season of How to Adult with mental health as its theme.
The fellowship programme seeks to improve the quality of mental health reporting in the media and is named after the late Rosalynn Carter, co-founder of the Carter Centre and an influential voice in the field of mental health for decades. The National administers the scheme in the UAE for the US-based non-profit, non-governmental organisation.
Nasar will begin her year-long non-residential fellowship next month and will succeed Ghenwa Yehia and Nour Ibrahim, who both delivered reporting projects on artificial intelligence and mental health.
Yehia published a series of pieces with Khaleej Times on the increasing use of AI to manage grief. Her reporting examined whether technology can replicate human connection, looked at prolonged grief disorder and considered the ethics of grief-tech.
Ibrahim reported a three-part series for The National, which explored young people's use of AI, the risks associated with its role in mental health solutions and a piece from the perspective of the tech creators building apps in this sector.
All three fellows will travel to the Carter Centre in Atlanta next month to attend the fellowship’s annual meeting to discuss their work and receive intensive training from experts and mentors in the US.
More than 250 journalists around the world have been awarded fellowships since the inception of the programme in 1996.
UAE fellows in previous years have contributed stories across a wide variety of subjects, including examining attitudes towards mental health in the regional music industry, documenting the lived realities of expatriate fathers in the region, reporting on conflict and trauma and examining mental health provision in education.
