In 2024, STAT’s reporters brought you tons of great journalism. We’ve also collected for you below our annual list of stories that STAT staffers loved, and wish that they had written. (Also check out the jealousy list at Bloomberg Businessweek, which had the idea first.)
The Cystic-fibrosis Breakthrough That Changed Everything
by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic
As health reporters, we write a lot about the toll diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell take on patients, and the long-running efforts to cure them. Rarely — in part because it so rarely happens — do we write about what happens after the cure comes. Sarah Zhang, in this brilliant profile, deftly walks through what happened after a treatment came for CF: How for many patients, it not only added decades of life but changed, in complicated ways, what it meant to live.
— Submitted by Jason Mast
How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe
by Sharon Lerner, ProPublica
There have been many explosive revelations about how companies like 3M and DuPont poisoned the world with PFAS, or “forever chemicals.” One such account, about how attorney Rob Bilott took a farmer’s accusation of DuPont poisoning his cows and turned it into landmark lawsuits, was turned into a 2019 Mark Ruffalo movie. But Sharon Lerner’s latest installment in the canon of what these companies knew and when they knew it is worse than anyone could have imagined: A company keeping secrets from its employees, and a woman who had been gaslit for decades about what she found — that 3M’s chemicals were in blood samples of every single person on Earth. The narrative techniques Lerner is using had me on the ropes the whole time. Goosebumps, chills, some “oh my gosh”s…you have to read this one.
—Submitted by Brittany Trang
Rags to Riches. The race to understand—and profit from—period blood.
by Maddie Oatman, Mother Jones
With DNA-altering medicines and protein structure-predicting AIs, it may feel like we’re living in a sci-fi future. But when it comes to menstruation, science is still very much stuck in the past. In this fascinating, infuriating deep-dive into how the historical stigma and cultural taboos around periods have hamstrung efforts to learn from them, Maddie Oatman unabashedly explores the overlooked potential of menstrual fluid as a rich source of health information — for everything from cancer screening to fertility testing to understanding debilitating diseases like endometriosis.
— Submitted by Megan Molteni
The Year After a Denied Abortion
by Stacy Kranitz and Kavitha Surana, ProPublica
Sometimes it’s hard to wrap our heads around exactly how a sweeping policy affects people on the ground. ProPublica has done an incredible job this year documenting exactly how devastating abortion restrictions have been for families. The publication’s photo essay by Stacy Kranitz, with reporting from Kavitha Surana, is one of the most powerful pieces of journalism I’ve seen this year. The two followed Mayron Michelle Hollis for a year after she was denied an abortion for a risky pregnancy, documenting her uphill battle to take care of her children in a state with a weak social safety net. She fights crushing financial burdens, addiction, and mental health struggles. Kranitz’s photos capture this anguish, as well as the moments of joy and connection that make up a life.
— Submitted by Lizzy Lawrence
Doctors said cutting countertops destroyed his lungs. He had to fight for workers’ comp
by Emily Alpert Reyes, Los Angeles Times
OK, I’m cheating a little bit, because the first installment in this series about an illness afflicting Los Angeles County countertop-cutters was published in late 2023. But the follow-up this year illustrates reporter Emily Alpert Reyes’ commitment to the plight of mostly young Latino workers with an incurable disease caused by inhaling bits of silica found in engineered stone countertops. This series lays bare the unconscionable choice many American workers face between staying healthy and making a living.
— Submitted by Isabella Cueto
The Miseducation of America’s Nurse Practitioners
by Caleb Melby, Polly Mosendz, and Noah Buhayar, Bloomberg
The rise of mid-level clinicians is one of the most important trends reshaping American medicine. This Bloomberg story investigates the terrifying underbelly of this trend and raises big questions about whether some of these midlevel clinicians are qualified to care for us and our children.
— Submitted by Zachary Tracer
Why does anyone care about the Nobel Prize?
by Gisela Salim-Payer, The Atlantic
“The Nobel is one of the greatest branding exercises in history,” Gisela Salim-Peyer writes before explaining how the Nobel Prize came to be the prize. This is the kind of sacred cow-slaying I love to see as an opinion editor.
— Submitted by Torie Bosch
‘Unqualified failure’ in polio vaccine policy left thousands of kids paralyzed
By Leslie Roberts, Science
There isn’t a reporter on the planet who has covered the painful, protracted endgame (if we’re lucky!) of the polio eradication program as diligently and smartly as Leslie Roberts, who mainly publishes in Science. Roberts got her hands on a draft copy of a report on the tragically botched “Switch”, the 2016 effort to remove a problematic component from the live-virus polio vaccine. The candid draft report was an anguished post-mortem by the people behind the decision to push ahead with the change, despite the fact the world was not ready. The final version, posted months later while the world was fixated on the U.S. election results, was sanitized. But the original lives on in Roberts’ reporting.
— Submitted by Helen Branswell
“Eat What You Kill”
by J. David McSwane, ProPublica
Everything from the headline — “Eat what you kill” — to the jaw dropping details of this story of a rogue doctor reads like a Netflix thriller. But the story is terrifyingly and tragically true. ProPublica’s J. David McSwane did a masterful job telling this anguished story of a doctor, the hospital, nurses, and town he largely controlled, and the many deaths he caused with no one raising concerns for years because the profits he was reaping were so great.
— Submitted by Usha Lee McFarling
Insurers Reap Hidden Fees by Slashing Payments. You May Get the Bill.
by Chris Hamby, New York Times
We’ve done some reporting on MultiPlan, a little-known company to the public that operates in the shadows of the health care system. But this investigation exposes just how integral it is within the health insurance industry — and deftly explains how MultiPlan’s business translates into higher costs for all workers and their companies that provide them with health coverage. The New York Times even wrangled important documents that were sealed in federal court to bolster its series, highlighting how MultiPlan and all of the biggest health insurance carriers work together to pay as little as possible for out-of-network medical claims and reap “savings” that should be passed back to consumers.
— Submitted by Bob Herman
Vaping Is Too Good To Be True
by Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
I’ve been a big fan of the YouTube channel “Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell” for a very long time. In my opinion, the videos they produce are the gold standard in animated explainer videos. “Vaping is too good to be true” is quintessential Kurzgesagt —deeply researched, nuanced, beautifully illustrated and expertly animated. It’s very accessible and fun to watch, but ultimately leaves the viewer with the big important takeaways — is vaping healthier than smoking? Almost certainly. Is it dangerous? Well, we don’t know just how dangerous yet, but yes. It’s science communication at its best.
— Submitted by Alex Hogan
721 children in rogue surgeon investigation at Great Ormond Street Hospital
by Shaun Lintern, The Sunday Times
London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital is renowned as one of the great children’s hospitals of the world. That made it all the more shocking to read this Sunday Times story about alleged improper care by an orthopedic surgeon named Yaser Jabbar who worked on the lower limb reconstruction service. It describes a child needing a leg amputated because of complications following a surgery, and other children left with legs of different lengths. The story also detailed a damning report from the Royal College of Surgeons about Jabbar, who left GOSH last year, and problems at GOSH widely. Finally, it broke the news of a GOSH review of hundreds of patients who had been cared for by Jabbar; of the 37 cases that had been reviewed by that point, 22 were found to have undergone some degree of harm.
— Submitted by Andrew Joseph
