William Heisel

Contributing Editor

I have reported on health for most of my career. My work as an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register exposed problems with the fertility industry, the trade in human body parts and the use of illegal drugs in sports. I helped create a first-of-its-kind report card judging hospitals on a wide array of measures for a story that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I was one of the lead reporters on a series of stories about lead in candy, a series that also was a finalist for the Pulitzer.For the Center for Health Journalism (previously known as Reporting on Health), I have written about investigative health reporting and occasionally broke news on my column, Antidote. I also was the project editor on the Just One Breath collaborative reporting series. These days, for the University of Washington, I now work as the Executive Director for Insitutue for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Client Services, a social enterprise. You can follow me on Twitter @wheisel.

Articles

Living in the Shadows: Refugee children show resilience despite horrors at home

The Resilience of Refugee Children After War report put together by the American Psychological Association offers a a comprehensive assessment of decades of research into the psychological effects of the refugee experience.

Seahawk shakes up the way we think about disability

Derrick Coleman Jr., one of the running backs for the Seattle Seahawks, shows that defining people by what they can’t do is much less compelling than defining people by what they can do.

Living in the Shadows: Immigrants sometimes healthier than natives

Reporters who have covered immigrant communities may have heard of the “healthy migrant effect.” Here are some of the factors at play in this phenomenon.

A Public Death: States blocking better data on pregnancy-related deaths

Nine hold out states are preventing the United States as a whole from addressing its high rate of deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth. And they’ve been holding out for 10 years.

Old Habits: Can better training make forceps deliveries safer?

The consensus view seems to be that forceps should continue to be part of the medical toolkit. But there are a lot of “ifs” to that statement.

Living in the Shadows: Trauma science puts immigrants under the microscope

No matter their nationality, people leaving their countries as refugees often show signs of trauma, through PTSD, depression and other mental health problems. These findings provided one of the underpinnings for our Living in the Shadows series.

Image from www.usatoday.com

Q&A with Liz Szabo Part 2: Seeing the humanity in the harshest of critics

USA Today's Liz Szabo knows that criticism comes with the territory, but she doesn't respond to name-calling. She will engage in constructive and civil conversation with readers who are genuinely concerned.

Image from www.usatoday.com

Q&A with Liz Szabo: Braving legal threats to investigate a medical folk hero

USA Today reporter Liz Szabo breaks news for a living. So she had to squeeze her investigation of Dr. Stanley Burzynski and the patients who died under his care into the few hours or minutes between breaking daily news.

Living in the shadows immigrant health

Living in the Shadows: Link between immigration and health hinges on specifics

Sifting through the scientific literature on immigration and health makes one thing clear above all else: the health of immigrants is very much shaped by the particulars of their background.

Image by Salim Fadhley via Flickr

Old Habits: Should forceps be banned for all births?

No one would blame a young couple for curling up on their couch and just forgetting about the rest of the world for a while after their daughter died from a birth injury. But they have quickly tried to make a difference and enact change.