Lauren Weber

Lauren Weber, Midwest correspondent, is covering how America’s health system is working — and not working — for patients in that region. Based in St. Louis, her hometown, she tackles everything from rural hospital closures to health system consolidation to state and national reform promises made on the 2020 campaign trail. Formerly a health policy reporter for HuffPost based in Washington, D.C., she has covered a wide variety of topics including Ebola and hepatitis A outbreaks as well as the health of migrant detainees. While at HuffPost, she also created “The Morning Email,” a weekday rundown of the news, and served as the voice of HuffPost on Amazon Echo. She was a 2017 USC Annenberg Health Journalism National Fellow. In 2020, she collaborated on “Underfunded, Under Threat,” a data-based analysis of the struggles of public health departments around the country with Kaiser Health News colleagues Laura Ungar, Hannah Recht and Anna Maria Barry-Jester, along with the AP’s Michelle R. Smith. The project received a 2020 Kavil Science Journalism “Gold Award.”