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JoNel Aleccia
Senior Correspondent
Senior Correspondent
I'm a longtime health reporter who has worked at the Associated Press, Kaiser Health News and previously at The Seattle Times. Before that, I was a national health reporter for msnbc.com and NBC News.com from 2008 to 2014. And before that, I was a reporter, editor and columnist for more than two decades at Northwest newspapers. I was a 2015 Center for Health Journalism National Fellow.
A cluster of serious birth defects in central Washington state has led health officials on a search for the cause. Experts believe a lack of folic acid may be partly to blame, but efforts to fortify common Hispanic foods such as corn masa have languished. Fellow JoNel Aleccia investigates.