The Association of Health Care Journalists announced on Wednesday that ProPublica won two first-place honors and one third-place honor in its Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.
“Stillbirths: When Babies Die Before Taking Their First Breath” by Duaa Eldeib won in the consumer/feature category. In this poignant series, Eldeib shattered the silence around stillbirths, which claim more than 20,000 babies each year, and uncovered a cascade of failures that have contributed to this catastrophic loss of life in the U.S., which has one of the worst stillbirth rates among wealthy countries. With compassion and sensitivity, Eldeib shares the stories of mothers who have been failed by a health care system that does not listen to them. The medical community has responded to the series, and legislation that was moribund now may pass. But the greatest impact has come from families themselves, who have said they were finally heard after years of being dismissed and ignored.
“Endgame,” a collaboration between ProPublica and The New Yorker, won in the health policy category. Half of all Americans die in hospice, and Ava Kofman’s groundbreaking investigation provoked a national conversation on the American way of death — along with demands to reform an industry that has long been ignored. Packing deep reporting and data analysis into an arresting legal thriller, Kofman exposed the way easy money and lax regulation have transformed a charity movement into a $22 billion juggernaut rife with exploitation.
Less than three weeks after the exposé was published, bipartisan members of Congress sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services requesting the agency “immediately investigate the situation.” And in December HHS announced that tackling hospice abuse was among its top recommendations. In January, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reformed how they inspect hospice providers.
ProPublica also placed third in the health policy category for “She Wanted an Abortion. A Judge Said She Wasn’t Mature Enough to Decide.” by Lizzie Presser. A collaboration between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, this story provides an in-depth look at parental involvement laws, which require minors to notify or get consent from one or both parents before getting an abortion. They are among the most popular abortion restrictions in the country, yet these laws — and their repercussions on teenagers — have received surprisingly little attention. Teens who can’t engage a parent must go to court to prove to a judge that they are mature enough to end their pregnancy in a process called judicial bypass. Taking into account the broader legal and political contexts of parental involvement laws and teenage pregnancy, Presser takes an unflinching look at the life of one young woman who was forced into motherhood and forever transformed by this abortion restriction.
See a list of all the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism winners.
