Helen Branswell, one of the original reporters for STAT News when it launched in 2015, died Tuesday at the age of 69 from cancer.
Andrew Joseph of STAT News reports, “Branswell, a longtime reporter at the Canadian Press, joined STAT at its founding in 2015, working out of the Boston headquarters before returning home to Canada last year to be closer to family in Ottawa.
“‘Throughout her career, Helen demonstrated an unwavering commitment to evidence, science, and truth, helping the public understand some of the most complex and consequential health challenges of our time,’ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, wrote in an email. ‘At a moment when misinformation competes with facts, her reporting was a trusted source of clarity, honesty, and insight.’
“Among the awards Branswell received were the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting and the George Polk Award for Public Service, which cited her ‘relentless coverage of all aspects of the [Covid] pandemic that became must reading for the medical community and the general public’ — stories that, the judges wrote, were ‘almost uniformly timely and astute.’ She was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist with two colleagues for their early Covid stories, and received an honorary degree from Ottawa’s Carleton University.”
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