I’m a healthcare reporter in Washington, D.C.

I write about health policy and medicine.

On the policy side, I covered the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections, highlighting presidential candidates’ positions on a range of healthcare issues, and capturing a physician-led protest in 2016.

I have written about security risks to the U.S. drug supply, the impact of private equity acquisitions on hospitals, and efforts by some Republican senators to narrow the scope of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On the medical side, I have tracked and translated the latest research on treating psychiatric disorders, including substance use disorders, with an emphasis on vulnerable individuals— such as pregnant women and young people. I’ve also made an extra effort to dispel health misinformation (because words matter) and cast a spotlight on a number of “medical mysteries.”

In 2019, I was awarded a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network to pursue and co-publish an investigation of nurses and suicide with KPBS .

In 2020, Elizabeth Hlavinka and I wrote a series on the impacts of the pandemic on child welfare, through a fellowship from USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism. Our work on young people aging out of foster care won a Poverty and Inequality Award from the National Press Foundation.

And in 2024, my exclusive series “What’s the Matter with For-Profit Nursing Programs?” was a finalist for a National Institute of Health Care Management award.

I grew up outside Philadelphia. (That liquid from your tap is most certainly “wooter.”) I graduated from Georgetown University, where I majored in English and Psychology. After a stint in book publishing in New York City, I earned my degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and moved to Washington D.C., where I Iive now.