Is It Time to Cancel Menopause?
PROTO.LIFE · June 2022
Ovarian research aims to extend fertility and lengthen lives by delaying menopause — but the ultimate moonshot would be ending it altogether.
The Champion for Rare Disease Cures
PROTO.LIFE · September 2021
An entrepreneur with his own rare disease finds a way to align incentives and needs to support research on rare diseases. (Part 5 in an ongoing series.) *Winner, Association of Health Care Journalists award
The Next Frontier in Baby-Making
Boston Globe · October 2023
More successful IVF, egg cells from men, and sperm cells from women? Biotech researchers aim to greatly expand reproductive opportunity.
Mental Health Crisis Centers and EmPATH Units: Offering Care that Busy ERs Can’t
STAT · April 2024
The emergency room is America’s default front door to psychiatric crisis care. Yet ERs are rarely designed or equipped to provide optimal care during mental health emergencies. And the consequences of this system, which were always problematic, are now nearing catastrophic.
They’re Immigrants, Farmworkers, and New Moms. And They’re Facing Postpartum Depression at Higher Rates.
STAT · September 2023
Doctors at public clinics in the arrestingly beautiful Santa Clara River Valley say postpartum depression and anxiety appear rampant among their patients. What’s happening in this corner of California is likely not an aberration, but a natural consequence of the fragile conditions in which immigrant laborers live.
Can Hackers Save This Man’s Hearing and Eyesight?
PROTO.LIFE · August 2017
A genetic hackathon becomes a treasure hunt — for one man’s cure and countless others’ hopes to reinvent rare-disease research. (Part 2 in an ongoing series.)
The Vanishing: What Happened to the Thousands Still Missing in Mexico?
Longreads · April 2016
More than 23,000 people have gone missing during Mexico’s drug wars. Every year, their families make a trek to Monterrey seeking answers.
How Far Can Beer Science Go?
Craftsmanship · March 2016
The irreverent scientists behind San Francisco’s Method Brewing, and their mission to rid the world of boring beer.
New Health Rankings: Of 17 Nations, U.S. Is Dead Last
The Atlantic · January 2013
Will seeing just how far we’ve fallen behind other countries, across almost all measures of health, finally motivate change?
A Female Hiker Grapples With Mysterious Mount Tam Deaths
KQED · April 2014
A first-person essay on coping when a new feeling intrudes into a place you hold sacred: fear.
Left Out: Why Is It So Hard for Older Women to Get the HPV Vaccine?
The Atlantic · June 2012
Doctors stop recommending the HPV vaccine to women once they’ve reached their mid-20s. But is it a good idea for older individuals who still want it?
How to Make the Best Mole Negro
The Atlantic · March 2012
First, find a Spanish translator and have them call up Soledad Ramirez Heras, a 71-year-old grandmother of eight, who gives day-long classes out of her home in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Serious Illness Complicates Deportation Case
Sacramento Bee · January 2012
The digital counter ticked down the remaining minutes of Ignacio Mesa Viera’s dialysis treatment. 0:03, it read – three minutes to go. For all he knew, that treatment on a recent Wednesday could have been his last. He expected the U.S. government to deport him to his birth country, Mexico, the next day. [PDF]
In the Fruitvale Section of Oakland, Merchants Are Armed and Wary
New York Times · September 2011
At Esparza’s Jewelry in the Fruitvale section of Oakland, the owner, Rodolfo Perez, works the counter with a .38-caliber revolver strapped to his belt.
At the Curb, Wheels for Free Expression
New York Times · December 2010
If the residents of the Haight, the Castro, the Mission and other San Francisco neighborhoods were given a giant public chalkboard, what would they write?
Inside Intelligence
Edutopia · April 2009
MRI scans show that human abilities come in many combinations. The complex skills apparent in individual kids are reflected on the inside, as well as the outside. And by helping a child hone her abilities, you can actually change her brain. [PDF]
Outside In: The Walden Project
Edutopia · March 2007
The clouds are still thick from recent rain as nineteen students board a bus outside Vergennes Union High School in rural Vergennes, Vermont. When they get off the bus on a country highway, four of them stop to pull kale and tall leeks from a garden for the day’s lunch. Then they follow the others 500 feet down a soggy trail to the grove of red cedars that is their classroom. [PDF]
Drowning Victims Remembered
Eagle-Tribune · December 2004
Story on the second anniversary of the Eagle-Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage. [PDF]
Mourning Mom Sews Quilts for Veterans
Eagle-Tribune · January 2004
The day before he died, Barbara O’Neill’s son called and told her how cold and dark it was at night in Afghanistan. She was sewing a quilt for him then, but put it away unfinished after the news came. Now, she is filling her days with a new purpose. She is giving warmth, if not to her son, then to the people he most admired — the veterans of Haverhill. [PDF]
Where You’d Least Expect It, Someone Who Listens
Boston Globe · January 2002
Everyone who commutes to Massachusetts General Hospital on the Red Line knows him. He is the elderly man with a long white beard and knitted black beanie who stands in the corner of the pedestrian overpass on weekday mornings, leaning on his crutches and holding a change cup and a sign that reads, “Please — I am not hopeless.” But to many commuters, Tom K. is much more than a familiar face. He is a friend. [PDF]