Robin Fields is a reporter with ProPublica. She joined ProPublica as a reporter in 2008, became a senior editor in 2010 and served as managing editor from 2013 to 2022 prior to returning to the reporter role. As an editor, she has overseen projects on political dark money, injection wells, the military’s handling of traumatic brain injuries, police violence in post-Katrina New Orleans, cell tower deaths and the nation's troubled system of death investigations. Work she has edited has twice been honored with George Polk Awards, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and IRE. These projects also have resulted in four documentaries made in partnership with PBS FRONTLINE, two of which received Emmy nominations. As a reporter at ProPublica, Fields did a project on U.S. dialysis care and wrote stories about a troubled chain of psychiatric hospitals. Fields was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for her work on dialysis, which was also honored by IRE and the Society of Professional Journalists and received the Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism. Fields began her career at the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida. Before joining ProPublica, spent nine years as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she worked on investigations into political fundraiser Norman Hsu, California's adult guardianship system and abuses at the J. Paul Getty Trust. Her work on guardianship received the National Journalism Award for investigative reporting, a Sigma Delta Chi Public Service Award and an Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award.
The Biden administration hasn’t delivered on its goals of measuring the public health impact of abortion bans. Experts say it’s a missed opportunity to study how the laws may lead to deaths and long-term injuries.
The same political leaders who enacted abortion bans oversee the state committees that review maternal deaths. These committees haven’t tracked the laws’ impacts, and most haven’t finished examining cases from the year the bans went into effect.
U.S. service members have long faced strict limits on abortions, even when used to resolve miscarriages. Under federal law, the military will only pay for abortions in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother’s life.
A new study challenged the accuracy of public health data on deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth — and the narrative of high and rising U.S. maternal mortality rates. An unusual public dispute has ensued.
After ProPublica reported on a Michigan insurer that wouldn’t cover a cancer patient’s last-chance treatment, a state lawmaker introduced a measure compelling health plans to cover a new generation of advanced cancer therapies.
After ProPublica reported on a health insurer that refused to cover the only medicine that could save a cancer patient’s life, Michigan insurance regulators clarified that, by law, many plans must pay for any clinically proven treatments.
States have passed hundreds of laws to protect people from wrongful insurance denials. Yet from emergency services to fertility preservation, insurers still say no.
A Michigan law requires coverage of cancer drugs. One insurer came up with a “defensible” way to avoid paying for treatments that offered Forrest VanPatten his last chance for survival. “We crossed the line,” says a former executive.
Insurers’ denial rates — a critical measure of how reliably they pay for customers’ care — remain mostly secret to the public. Federal and state regulators have done little to change that.
With a new coronavirus booster rolling out, a leading expert on vaccines explains how public health leaders have struggled to set expectations for the COVID-19 vaccine and convey clearly who benefits from each additional shot.
Using sewage sample tests from three countries separated by thousands of miles, public health officials hope to unravel the mystery of where this polio started circulating and what threat it poses.
U.S. public health agencies generally don’t test wastewater for signs of polio. That may have given the virus time to circulate silently before it paralyzed a New York man.
The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among wealthy countries. And it may get worse as abortions become more difficult to obtain, say public health experts.
Years ago, ProPublica Managing Editor Robin Fields investigated California conservatorships. Recently, she interviewed New York Times Senior Story Editor Liz Day about the reporting in the “Framing Britney Spears” documentary.
Much has changed since ProPublica published its first story, but we remain committed to the power of fact-based journalism to spur change and right wrongs.
A statistical jump in the mortality rate of expectant and new mothers over 40 is “biologically implausible,” according to the co-author of a new study.
Amid intensifying concerns about deaths and near-deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth, New York City will review cases in depth to protect mothers and improve data collection.
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