New York Times, Baltimore Sun Reporters Win Pulitzer Prizes for Health Issue Reporting
New York Times metro reporter Clifford Levy and Baltimore Sun health reporter Diana Sugg on April 7 were awarded Pulitzer Prizes in investigative reporting and beat reporting, respectively, for health care-related stories. Levy won the prize for a three-part series called "Broken Homes" about the neglect and abuse of thousands of mentally ill adults in New York state-regulated homes (New York Times, 4/8). To write the series, Levy examined 5,000 pages of annual state inspection records, conducted 200 interviews with workers, residents and family members and made 36 visits to the homes over one year. He reported that since the deinstitutionalization of the state's mental health system in 1975, state investigators have characterized the homes as "little more than psychiatric flophouses, with negligent supervision and incompetent distribution of crucial medication" and that the "state has not kept track of what could be the greatest indicator of how broken the homes are: how many residents are dying, under what circumstances and at what ages" (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 4/29/02). After the articles were published, New York Gov. George Pataki (R) proposed $80 million in spending on new housing and other initiatives to improve care (New York Times, 4/8). Sugg received the prize for health beat reporting that covered, among other stories, a mother whose 11-year-old son died in an emergency room, brothers who volunteered as test subjects for a sickle-cell anemia treatment and the high number of stillbirths in an age of technical medical advances (Atkinson, Baltimore Sun, 4/8). Levy's series is available online. Sugg's articles are available online.
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