Aradhna Wal is an independent journalist from New Delhi. She has covered health, science, politics, gender, caste, and culture for print and online publications. She gravitates toward longform stories on social inequity to create a better understanding of how state policy impacts people’s lives. Wal received the Earth Journalism Network’s Asia-Pacific Story grant in 2021 to report on zoonotic diseases in tribal regions of Odisha, a state in eastern India, in the wake of environmental changes. In 2019 she was awarded the inaugural Investigative Reporting in Public Health grant by the Thakur Foundation to cover mental illness in farming communities in rural Maharashtra, including local and community interventions and government projects to reduce farmer suicides. She has written for Scroll, The Caravan, IndiaSpend, and The Signal, among other outlets. Before she started freelance work, Wal was a health and news features reporter with the online news site News18 and for the national outlet Daily News and Analysis (DNA). She covered the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, hospitals, and scientific research.