2025 Winning Contest Entries

Now in its 22nd year, the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism recognizes the best of health care journalism across all platforms. The 2025 contest drew 396 entries in 16 categories.

Audio Reporting — Short Form (all sizes)

First Place
Chickenless Chicken Shows? Bird Flu Reshapes County Fairs and 4-H Kids Make Do
April Dembosky and Kevin Stark, KQED Public Radio
Second Place
Republicans Call Medicaid Rife With Fraudsters. This Man Sees No Choice but To Break the Rules.
Katheryn Houghton, NPR, All Things Considered and KFF Health News

Audio Reporting — Long Form (all sizes)

First Place
The Network
STAFF, NPR’s Embedded and Futuro Media
Second Place
The Protocol
Azeen Ghorayshi and Austin Mitchell, The New York Times
Third Place
Saving lives with fewer dollars
Mary Childs, Marianne McCune, and Sam Yellowhorse Kesler, NPR’s Planet Money podcast

Beat Reporting (all sizes)

First Place
The Administration’s Assault on Public Health
Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times
Second Place
Hospital Safety and Quality in Philadelphia
Sarah Gantz, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Third Place
The Unraveling of the Food and Drug Administration
Lizzy Lawrence, STAT
Honorable Mention
Covering Medicaid in the South
Anna Claire Vollers, Stateline

Business (all sizes)

First Place
Sick in a Hospital Town
Ginger Thompson and Doris Burke, ProPublica
Second Place
The CRISPR Companies Are Not OK
Jason Mast, STAT
Third Place
The Fertility Divide
Jessica Bartlett, The Boston Globe
Honorable Mention
What a $2 Million Per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing
Robin Fields, ProPublica

Consumer/Feature (Small Division)

First Place
Detransition is key to politicians’ anti-trans agenda. But what is it really like?
Orion Rummler, The 19th News
Second Place
Endometriosis ravaged my body and life. Why did it take so long to get a diagnosis?
McKenna Oxenden, Houston Landing
Third Place
Long COVID clinical trials series
Betsy Ladyzhets, Miles W. Griffis, and Felicity Nelson, The Sick Times

Consumer/Feature (Large Division)

First Place
Overmedicated America
Shalini Ramachandran, Betsy McKay, and Tom McGinty, The Wall Street Journal
Second Place
Noah Is Still Here
Sheri Fink, The New York Times Magazine
Third Place
The hidden victims of the opioid crisis: the ones who lived
Erika Fry, The Guardian
Honorable Mention
“Just Let Me Die”
Duaa Eldeib, ProPublica

Health Policy (Small Division)

First Place
Priced Out
STAFF, The Connecticut Mirror
Second Place
Medicated in Foster Care
Michael Fitzgerald, Jeremy Loudenback, and Susanti Sarkar, The Imprint
Third Place
Medicaid rent assistance failures
Lillian Mongeau Hughes, The Oregonian/OregonLive
Honorable Mention
The Cost of Failing
Danielle Ohl, Spotlight PA

Health Policy (Large Division)

First Place
The Hunger Games
Ted Sherman, Susan K. Livio, and Matthew Miller, Advance Local
Second Place
Gutted: The Dismantling of Public Health
Annie Waldman, Brandon Roberts, and Pratheek Rebala, ProPublica
Third Place
American Science, Shattered
STAFF, STAT

Investigative (Small Division)

First Place
Deadly Dust
Michael Sallah, Mike Wereschagin, and Jimmy Cloutier, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Second Place
Behind Bars, Beyond Care
Gwen Dilworth and Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today
Third Place
A System of Harm
William Skipworth, The New Hampshire Bulletin

Investigative (Large Division)

First Place
Our Broken Transplant System
STAFF, The New York Times
Second Place
Cancer Capitalism
Robert Langreth, Bloomberg News
Third Place
Bad Practice
STAFF, The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) with 50 other outlets
Honorable Mention
Failed to Death
Cynthia Dizikes and Joaquin Palomino, San Francisco Chronicle

Public Health (Small Division)

First Place
Mississippi’s C-section problem
Sophia Paffenroth and Erica Hensley, Mississippi Today and The Fuller Project
Second Place
Unprotected
Angela Couloumbis and Sarah Anne Hughes, Spotlight PA
Third Place
The Black Box
Allen Siegler, Andrea López Cruzado, and Maeve Rigney, Mississippi Today
Honorable Mention
A Shot at Survival
Leslie Roberts, Science Magazine

Public Health (Large Division)

First Place
What the U.S. Government Is Dismissing That Could Seed a Bird Flu Pandemic
Nat Lash, ProPublica
Second Place
Exposed and Expendable
Hannah Dreier, The New York Times
Third Place
Profit or Pain
STAFF, Bloomberg News
Honorable Mention
Tranq and the latest addiction crisis
Aubrey Whelan, Max Marin, and Dylan Purcell, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Student Reporting

First Place
Starved for Validation
FHN Media Staff, North Star, Francis Howell North High School (St. Charles, Mo.)
Second Place
Narcan is changing Central New York’s approach to overdoses
Kacie Moschella, The NewsHouse, Syracuse University
Third Place
Advocates fight for immigrant health care amid cuts to coverage, increased enforcement
Aaron Stigile, Alissa Gary, and Sydney Lovan, Carnegie-Knight News21, Arizona State University

Television and Video Reporting — Short Form (All Sizes)

First Place
True…or False?
Erin Moriarty, Sari Aviv, and Shoshana Walter, CBS Sunday Morning and The Marshall Project
Second Place
The Hospitals That Won’t Let Patients Go Home
STAFF, Bloomberg Originals
Third Place
IVF Errors: When the ‘medicine of miracles’ goes awry
Kenzi Abou-Sabe, Alexandra Chaidez, and Ellison Barber, NBC News Investigative Unit
Honorable Mention
KARE 11 Investigates: A Natural Death
A.J. Lagoe, Kelly Dietz, and Gary Knox, KARE 11-TV

Television and Video Reporting — Long Form (All Sizes)

First Place
Tragedy in Paradise
Andy Pierrotti, Luke Carter, WANF-TV Staff, WANF-TV
Second Place
Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media
Matthew O’Neill, Perri Peltz, and Olivia Carville, Bloomberg News, DCTV and Jolt.film
Third Place
Dead Zone
Sarah Jane Tribble, Caresse Jackman, and Holly K. Hacker, KFF Health News and Investigate TV
Honorable Mention
Before a Breath: America’s Stillbirth Crisis
Nadia Sussman, Duaa Eldeib, and Liz Moughon, ProPublica and The WNET Group

Trade (All Sizes)

First Place
First-ever financial toxicity tumor board aims to change the standard of care
Claire Porter, The Cancer Letter
Second Place
What potential drugs are gathering dust on pharma’s shelves?
Bethany Halford, Chemical & Engineering News
Third Place
A new wave of middlemen offers ‘alternative funding’ for specialty drugs. Patients bear the risks
Anastassia Gliadkovskaya, Fierce Healthcare
Honorable Mention
40 years, still no closure
Priyanka Runwal and STAFF, Chemical & Engineering News

More About the Awards

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2025 Winning Contest Entries

Categories

Audio Reporting — Short Form (all sizes)

Audio Reporting — Long Form (all sizes)

Beat Reporting (all sizes)

Business (all sizes)

Consumer/Feature (Small Division)

Consumer/Feature (Large Division)

Health Policy (Small Division)

Health Policy (Large Division)

Investigative (Small Division)

Investigative (Large Division)

Public Health (Small Division)

Public Health (Large Division)

Student Reporting

Television and Video Reporting — Short Form (All Sizes)

Television and Video Reporting — Long Form (All Sizes)

Trade (All Sizes)

More About the Awards

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