What I Cover

I’m reporting on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as it grapples with cuts in staff and funding and a new administration determined to end longstanding global health programs and collaboration.

My Background

For more than three decades, my stories about health and safety have prompted changes in laws and saved lives.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, ProPublica colleagues and I explored the anguish inside the CDC as, with breathtaking speed, the vaunted agency — the global gold standard for public health — became a target of anger, scorn and even pity. Many reporters had covered clashes between the first Trump administration and the agency’s scientists. But we wanted to tell a story that was more intimate and consequential: What happened when the CDC lost the public’s trust? What was it like for scientists ordered to go along with directives that ran counter to everything they believed? Our investigative narrative took readers inside as some employees rebelled and others acquiesced. We showed how this loss of trust could have serious repercussions, influencing whether people decide to get vaccinated or reflexively reject any recommendations from public health officials. Subsequent Congressional hearings drew heavily on our reporting, and the story was a centerpiece of the ProPublica pandemic coverage that was named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

I joined ProPublica in 2018 after many years as a reporter on the Chicago Tribune’s investigative team. There I revealed how the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, with its myopic and docile approach to regulation, failed to protect children from injuries and death. This series, reported with my Tribune colleagues, prompted the biggest overhaul of product safety regulations in a generation, led to the recall of millions of toys and cribs and won a Pulitzer Prize.

My colleagues and I also exposed deceptive campaigns by the chemical and tobacco industries that brought toxic flame retardants into our homes and our bodies even though these harmful compounds don’t protect us from fires. The series led to a repeal of the rule responsible for the flame retardants packed into American furniture and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. My reporting was featured in two films, “Merchants of Doubt” and “Toxic Hot Seat.”

In addition, we showed how Illinois state officials steered low-income adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities into less-expensive, privately run group homes, then hid the resulting harm and deaths. That series, too, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Earlier in my career, I was a lead reporter on the Denver Post team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Columbine High School massacre.

I graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and was a Henry Luce Scholar in Thailand.

I read my mail! If you want to send a tip or documents that way, here’s my address:

Patricia Callahan

ProPublica

155 Avenue of the Americas, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10013