Audrey Dutton

Reporter

Photo of Audrey Dutton

Audrey Dutton is a longtime investigative journalist in Idaho. She was most recently senior reporter for the nonprofit Idaho Capital Sun, part of the States Newsroom network. At the Sun, she covered all angles of COVID-19 and held leaders accountable for allowing health misinformation to flourish. This included stories about a doctor who was appointed to Idaho’s largest regional health board while spreading anti-vaccine misinformation. Washington’s state medical board began disciplinary proceedings against the doctor.

Dutton previously spent a decade at the Idaho Statesman, where she investigated the health care industry, worker deaths, the criminalization of mental illness and violations of public records law.

Her reporting has contributed to state legislation, successful federal and state lawsuits over public records, greater COVID-19 data transparency, the filing of criminal charges and more.

Dutton has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in English and political science from Hamline University. She lives in Boise with her family.

Are Abortion Bans Across America Causing Deaths? The States That Passed Them Are Doing Little to Find Out.

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.

A Timeline of Failed Efforts to Reform Idaho’s Coroner System

Idaho lawmakers have come close to instituting reforms to the state's coroner system. Every attempt has failed. Often, the reason is simple, experts told ProPublica in recent months: Nobody wants to spend money on death.

For Decades, Calls for Reform to Idaho’s Troubled Coroner System Have Gone Unanswered

Idaho’s patchwork of 44 coroner’s offices leaves grief-stricken parents without answers in their children’s deaths and creates disparities in coroners’ investigations.

An Idaho Baby’s Unexplained Death Got No Autopsy and a Scant Coroner’s Investigation. State Law Says That’s Fine.

With a lack of regulation for coroners, a child who dies unexpectedly or outside of a doctor’s care in Idaho is less likely to be autopsied than anywhere else in the United States.

What Idaho’s Republican Primary Tells Us About America’s Culture Wars

The heavily Republican state booted 15 incumbents across the party’s ideological spectrum. While the election led to net gains for hard-line members of the right, it also underscores how divided Idaho’s party remains.

After Decades of Imprisoning Patients, Idaho Approves Secure Mental Health Facility

The Idaho Legislature has approved funding for a 26-bed facility after ProPublica found that state lawmakers and officials ignored repeated warnings about the practice of locking up mentally ill patients who hadn’t been convicted of a crime.

Idaho Keeps Some Psychiatric Patients in Prison, Ignoring Decades of Warnings About the Practice

A temporary program for “dangerously mentally ill” patients has continued for five decades, despite calls from critics to provide better care. Soon, Idaho will be the only state still using prisons to house patients who face no criminal charges.

Idaho Banned Abortion. Then It Turned Down Supports for Pregnancies and Births.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the state’s GOP-led Legislature has disbanded a maternal mortality committee, failed to expand postpartum Medicaid coverage and turned down federal grants for child care.

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