Karen Brown is a longtime health reporter for WFCR public radio in Western Massachusetts, a radio documentary producer, and a freelance contributor to National Public Radio, American RadioWorks, and other national outlets.

Outside of her regular newsroom duties, Brown has produced three national documentaries on mental health – “A Mind of their Own: Children with Bipolar Disorder,” “A Burden to Be Well: Siblings of the Mentally Ill,” and “Trauma and Recovery: Cambodians in America.”

She was a 2008-09 Kaiser Media Fellow (reporting on Massachusetts health reform) and a 2006 Rosalyn Carter Fellow in Mental Health Journalism. Her features and documentaries have won national awards, including the National Edward R. Murrow Award and the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize.

Before entering radio journalism, she wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer and for The Herald-Sun in Durham, North Carolina. In an even earlier life, she ran a consumer watchdog organization, Center for the Study of Commercialism, and wrote grants for the public interest law firm, The Christic Institute.

Brown has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she also earned a B.A. in psychology. She lives with her husband and 11-year-old twins in Northampton, MA.