William Heisel

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

Everybody Hurts: Patient advocates gird themselves for malpractice cap battle

Humorous videos make the point that police officers, firefighters, pilots, and others must undergo drug testing, but physicians don't. The same initiative is also fighting a sacred cow for California doctors -- the malpractice cap.

Everybody Hurts: California tries to cure prescription drug tracking system

In January, California will shore up promises it made when launching its innovative prescription drug-tracking program with more funding and a better ability to find patients who doctor shop or physicians who prescribe an abnormal amount of opiates.

Jackie YellowTail smudges herself with cedar smoke in her home near Garryowen. YellowTail's 16-year-old son committed suicide in January 2001. She says her faith has pulled her through the tragedy. (JAMES WOODCOCK/Gazette Staff)

In Our Faces: Lessons from the Billings Gazette suicide series

When Montana’s governor signed a law creating a suicide review team in May 2013, he called reporter Cindy Uken personally to tell her he signed it. For the last year, she's been reporting on the state's high suicide rates and the possible ways to change those trends.

Scrubs and Sandwiches: Applause for Mom’s Idea of Photographing Scrubs in Public

What would you do if you were picking out vegetables at the grocery story next to a health care worker in scrubs and blood-stained shoe covers?

Everybody Hurts: Researchers find painkillers don’t solve long-term problems

How likely are you to get hooked if you start taking prescription painkillers? There's scant evidence because most painkiller studies focus on whether they work. Whether they are addictive is logged merely as a side effect.

Scrubs and Sandwiches: One mom’s innovative germ-fighting idea

What Louisa Benitez saw in the hospital ahead of her son's heart surgery heightened her anxiety about the procedure and his risk for infection. Nurses and doctors were walking in and out in their surgical scrubs. Getting coffee. Sitting down with a magazine and eating a sandwich.