Kathy Ritchie
Senior Field CorrespondentKathy Ritchie has 20 years of experience reporting and writing stories for national and local media outlets — nearly a decade of it has been spent in public media.
Ritchie joined KJZZ in 2014 — and it’s here where she has spent most of her public media career. In 2017, Ritchie began reporting on aging issues, almost exclusively, for KJZZ.
Over the years, she has reported on the myriad challenges facing LGBTQ elders, the topic of aging and intimacy, senior homelessness, ambiguous loss and grief, grandfamilies, long-term care and costs of aging, and what it means to age in our society.
Throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, Ritchie reported on the struggles facing families, older adults and caregivers in long-term care. That work led her to create a miniseries called, Caring in Crisis, in which she documented the experiences of "the helpers."
Ritchie was also responsible for the station’s largest newsroom collaboration, a 10-part series, The State of Aging in the Valley.
She has gone on to produce a four-part podcast about life after dementia. The Recovering Caregiver was based on her own personal experience with her mother who had frontotemporal dementia and what life was like after. The final episode was nominated for a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award.
In 2023, Ritchie produced a second podcast, this time on the topic of menopause. Period, The End (But Not Really) aims to set the record straight about this often misunderstood, yet normal, stage of life. Her work has also been featured on the Hear Arizona podcast.
Besides serving KJZZs audience, many of Ritchie’s stories have also aired NPR and NPR’s national magazine show, Here & Now.
In addition to her public radio work, Ritchie served as the health and caregiving editor at Next Avenue, a national digital publication geared towards 50-plus. While there, she oversaw a team of contributors, identified opportunities for new feature stories and series, and oversaw the completion of the 2021 John A. Hartford Foundation grant, one of Next Avenue’s largest active grants to date. Ritchie was also responsible for Next Avenue's 2022 series entitled Aging with Disabilities in America. Next Avenue is part of the Twin Cities PBS system.
Besides her professional experience in the aging space, Ritchie wrote about her mother’s journey living with dementia in a blog.
Ritchie got her start in television at ABC News and later FOX News in New York City.
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In the next six years, there will be 7 million LGBTQ adults 65 or older in the U.S. That’s according to SAGE, the national advocacy organization. But LGBTQ elders often face unique hurdles that aren’t always understood. -
A national nonprofit that empowers individuals to talk about menopause has launched a campaign to remove what it calls “outdated and misleading” FDA warnings on vaginal estrogen, which is used to treat a very common condition in postmenopausal women. -
The good news? There’s much more awareness about menopause, specifically hormone therapy. The bad news? There’s a lot of misinformation being pushed out by some medical providers. -
Some members of AHCCCS, Arizona’s version of Medicaid, will soon be eligible for a new benefit: housing. The agency has launched a new program that it hopes will address homelessness in certain at-risk populations. -
More and more older adults are aging alone — either by choice or by circumstance, such as the death of a spouse or partner. While aging solo presents challenges, solutions are in the works. -
Attorney General Kris Mayes filed an amended complaint in the state’s ongoing lawsuit against Heritage Village Assisted Living, adding racketeering claims. She’s also asking the court to take over two other assisted living facilities controlled by the owners of Heritage Village. -
Arizona State University isn't’ just home to thousands of students. It’s also the home to Mirabella at ASU — a senior living community that was just awarded the first nation’s certification as a "university-based retirement community," or UBRC. -
Americans 60 and older are facing an uncertain future, with 80% of this population having too few resources to pay for long-term care or even basic things like food to live independently. -
In April, Gov. Katie Hobbs signed into law one of the most comprehensive pieces of long-term care legislation. The bill also required the creation of a Vulnerable Adults Study Committee, which kicked off Thursday. -
Arizonans will be casting their ballots very soon and that might include individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease or some other brain disorder. Now a guide has been created to help those assisting voters.
