Caroline Chen

Reporter

Photo of Caroline Chen

Caroline Chen previously covered health care for ProPublica. She has written about public health, hospitals, drugmakers and clinical trials, highlighting disparities in patient access, broken funding models and abuses of power.

Her 2020 coverage of the coronavirus pandemic included investigations into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s early failures to contain the outbreak, vaccine inequities and distortion of COVID-19 data. Her work was part of ProPublica’s coverage recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

Her 2019 stories on a heart transplant program in New Jersey that prioritized metrics over patient care won the Livingston Award for local reporting. Her story on racial disparities in cancer clinical trials with Riley Wong in 2018 won the June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism in online/multimedia reporting.

Her writing has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and NPR. Previously, she worked at Bloomberg News, where her coverage included the unraveling of blood test maker Theranos and the 2014 Ebola outbreak. She received her master’s degree from the Toni Stabile Program for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, where she was awarded a Pulitzer traveling fellowship.

A Hospital Kept a Brain-Damaged Patient on Life Support to Boost Statistics. His Sister Is Now Suing for Malpractice.

The lawsuit follows a ProPublica investigation that revealed that the heart transplant team at Newark Beth Israel let pressure to maintain survival rates guide medical decisions.

Texas Sends Millions to Crisis Pregnancy Centers. It’s Meant to Help Needy Families, But No One Knows if It Works.

Two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Texas leads the nation in funding for crisis pregnancy centers. The system is meant to help growing families, but it’s riddled with waste and lacks oversight, a ProPublica and CBS News investigation found.

How We Used Machine Learning to Investigate Where Ebola May Strike

ProPublica spent months teaching a computer to analyze past Ebola outbreaks linked to deforestation. What we found reveals a weakness in the way that governments and public health experts are preparing for future pandemics.

The Group That Governs U.S. Transplant Policies Voted to Require Testing of At-Risk Organ Donors for Chagas Disease

Bob Naedele died in 2018 after receiving a heart infected with the parasite that causes Chagas disease. The change in U.S. screening policy could prevent such deaths in the future.

Organ Transplant Patients Can Die When Donors Aren’t Screened for This Parasitic Disease

Bob Naedele died after receiving a heart from a donor with Chagas disease. His death could have been prevented if the donor had been tested. The group that governs U.S. transplant policies is considering mandatory screening of at-risk donors.

Why Scientists Have a Hard Time Getting Money to Study the Root Causes of Outbreaks

Government and nonprofit groups that award grants to scientists favor research that’s high tech and treatment oriented rather than studies that seek to understand why contagions leap from animals to people in the first place.

The Scientist and the Bats

Funders thought watching bats wasn’t important. Then she helped solve the mystery of a deadly virus.

This Scientist Tracked Bats for Decades and Solved a Mystery About a Deadly Disease

Ecologist Peggy Eby’s discovery after decades of studying bats in Australia underscores the time and shoe-leather research needed to prevent future pandemics.

Au bord de la catastrophe

Une simple clairière de forêt nous sépare de la prochaine pandémie mortelle. Mais nous n’essayons même pas de la prévenir.

How Forest Loss Can Unleash the Next Pandemic

The forests around the epicenter of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak are getting patchier. The next pandemic could emerge from the edges around these patches, where wildlife and humans mix.

Seeding Hope

They set out to save rainforests — and stumbled upon a way to help prevent the world’s next deadly pandemic.

On the Edge

The next deadly pandemic is just a forest clearing away. But we’re not even trying to prevent it.

What’s Holding Up the COVID Vaccines for Children Under 5?

For months, parents have been told COVID vaccines for their little ones are coming. But opaque communication from the FDA, shifting timelines, delays and misinformation have left parents frustrated and confused. Here’s everything we know at the moment.

What ProPublica Is Doing About Diversity in 2022

Here is our annual report on the breakdown of our staff and how we’re working to create a more diverse news organization and inclusive journalism community.

I Saw Firsthand What It Takes to Keep COVID Out of Hong Kong. It Felt Like a Different Planet.

On a visit to Hong Kong, ProPublica reporter Caroline Chen encountered a 21-day quarantine, a bevy of COVID tests, universal masking and, finally, a fear-free family holiday.

One Major Reason the U.S. Hasn’t Stopped Syphilis From Killing Babies

In reporting on the rising number of newborns needlessly dying of syphilis, ProPublica reporter Caroline Chen identified a contributing factor: the CDC’s funding structure, which is influenced by both politics and shifts in public attention.

Babies Are Dying of Syphilis. It’s 100% Preventable.

The United States’ inability to curb a treatable sexually transmitted disease shows the failures of a cash-strapped public health system. Increasingly, newborns are paying the price.

A Tiny Number of People Will Be Hospitalized Despite Being Vaccinated. We Have to Learn Why.

Experts say we should investigate “breakthrough infections” to look out for variants and understand who’s vulnerable. In many cases, that’s not happening. Crucial pieces of the puzzle are being tossed in the trash.

Barreras falsas: estas cosas no deberían impedirle vacunarse contra COVID-19

Se supone que las vacunas contra el coronavirus son gratuitas y están disponibles para todos en Estados Unidos, independientemente de su seguro o de su situación migratoria. Para algunos, no ha sido así.

False Barriers: These Things Should Not Prevent You From Getting a COVID Vaccine

Vaccinations for the coronavirus are supposed to be free and available to all Americans regardless of insurance or immigration status. For some, that isn’t how it has been playing out. Here are common false barriers to look out for.

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