2026 Health Coverage Fellows

Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a longtime Washington Correspondent at The New York Times, covering the intersection of health policy and politics and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. During nearly 30 years at Times, all of it based in Washington, Stolberg has been a science correspondent, a Congressional Correspondent, a White House Correspondent covering the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, a political features writer and a national correspondent covering the mid-Atlantic region. In 2020, Stolberg returned to health writing to help cover the coronavirus pandemic. Since then, she has covered the rise of Kennedy and his MAHA movement. She is also at work on a book that explores how public health and biomedical research have become caught up in America’s culture wars and partisan politics. Tentatively titled “Contagion of Mistrust,” the book will be published by Random House.

Scott Hensley

Scott Hensley is the Deputy Editor of the NPR Science Desk. In this role, Hensley leads domestic health coverage and edits stories about health, biomedical research and pharmaceuticals. He joined NPR in 2009 to launch Shots, a blog that expanded to become a digital destination for NPR’s health coverage. Previously, Hensley was a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal. As a reporter, he covered the drug industry and the Human Genome Project. Before becoming a journalist, Hensley worked in the medical device industry. He is a lover of Dobermans, lacrosse and Callinectes sapidus.

Hannah Kaufman

Hannah Kaufman is a health reporter at the Morning Sentinel, covering public health and access to care in central and western Maine. She is on the first health reporting team at the Maine Trust for Local News. Her reporting has explored infectious diseases, hospital closures, vaccine hesitancy and trans-friendly primary care in rural Maine. A born and bred North Carolinian, Hannah received a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and started her reporting career at INDY Week. She won several awards at the Maine Press Association this year and was a sponsored journalist at Radically Rural 2025. Hannah enjoys painting, rock climbing and swimming in lakes. One day, she’ll figure out how to get there from here.

Anuradha Mascarenhas

Anuradha Mascarenhas is a senior editor with The Indian Express and writes on a range of topics with a strong focus on health, environment and scientific research. She highlights issues raised by women and during the COVID-19 pandemic her reporting focused on orphaned children and survivors rebuilding their lives. She also explained multiple vaccine trials. With nearly three decades of experience as a journalist, Anuradha is drawn to inspiring stories of persons living with HIV, cancer, mental illness and other noncommunicable diseases. Her work also centres around healthy ageing. She blends personal stories with data and expert insights and one of her stories about why major science awards mostly go to men won the Laadli Media Award. Stories on gender sensitivity have also earned her several awards including the Press Council of India award. Author of her debut book At The Wheel Of Research, an exclusive biography of Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the inaugural WHO chief scientist, Anuradha was also part of the 2015 India Cohort of WomenLiftHealth Leadership journey. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and communication and a master’s degree in literature from University of Pune.

Sarah Neville

Sarah Neville is the Financial Times’s global health editor. She covers healthcare developments around the world, including the NHS. She spent her early career on local and regional newspapers, developing a particular interest in health, which led her ultimately to join a specialist health magazine. Later, she spent a decade reporting on the tumult of Westminster for the Yorkshire Post, including five years as political editor. One of her proudest accomplishments was interviewing five serving, or former, UK prime ministers, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. In 1995 she won the Laurence Stern Fellowship on the Washington Post, where she focused on health policy. Since joining the FT early in 2001, she has held a variety of senior editing and reporting roles, including weekend news editor, analysis editor, UK news editor, public policy editor and global pharmaceuticals editor. In 2013, she was part of a small team which won an EPPY award for best investigative feature for coverage of the impact of austerity on UK economy and society. She is a five-times finalist for health journalist of the year at the prestigious national Press Awards, winning the title in 2024.

Sarah Owermohle

Sarah Owermohle is a reporter covering health policy and politics for CNN. She joined CNN from STAT, where she was a Washington correspondent reporting on the federal government’s health care agenda, policies, and politics. At STAT, she covered the national Covid-19 response, the Biden administration’s health goals, and the burgeoning Make America Healthy Again movement. Prior to joining STAT, Owermohle covered health policy and the national health agencies for POLITICO, where she broke the news that the first Trump administration cancelled controversial coronavirus research in China, and covered the Food and Drug Administration navigating the coronavirus response. Owermohle previously covered the pharmaceutical industry for S&P Global Market Intelligence. Before returning to her home state of Virginia, Sarah spent five years in Dubai and Beirut reporting on business, finance, and development in the Middle East and Africa, including a three-year stint as an editor for the magazine Banker Africa. Owermohle graduated from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.

Daniel Payne

Daniel Payne is a Washington correspondent at STAT, where he covers the intersection of the health industry and the federal government. He previously covered health care at Politico, where he reported on HHS, health providers, global health, and Congress. Before Politico, he was a reporter and editor in Mississippi and graduated from the University of Mississippi.

Maggie Penman

Maggie Penman is a reporter for The Washington Post, writing about humanity, health and well-being. She covers topics ranging from what it takes to be a ‘super ager‚’ to why getting outside is so good for your brain, to the powerful effects of friendship for our physical and mental health. Maggie also regularly hosts and reports for The Washington Post’s podcasts. Maggie was previously the Executive Producer of Post Reports. She was a founding producer of the Hidden Brain podcast and has reported for NPR and its member stations.

Sarah Rahal

Sarah Rahal is a health and science reporter on The Boston Globe’s Metro desk, covering health systems, trends, federal policy changes, and inequities across New England. She joined the Globe in summer 2025 after eight years at The Detroit News, where she reported on breaking news, local government, the COVID-19 pandemic, caregiving, and Detroit’s post-bankruptcy recovery. Her 2023 investigation into kinship caregiving exposed major gaps in Michigan’s social safety net, spurred legislative reform, and won the state’s top prize for enterprise reporting. Before the Globe, she was a Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow at the University of Michigan, focusing on immigration and health policy disparities. A graduate of Wayne State University’s Journalism for Media Diversity program, Sarah previously served as president of the Michigan chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association and remains an advocate for newsroom equity. She grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, the nation’s largest Arab American enclave, and is the proud daughter of Lebanese immigrants.

Amanda Seitz

Amanda Seitz is a health care policy reporter in Washington for KFF Health News.
Using data, public records and personal interviews, she has sought to scrupulously document the effect that some of the most consequential federal policy changes of our time have had on people around the country. Her reporting has exposed the dangerous conditions pregnant women have been subjected to in emergency rooms during the post-Roe era. She has unearthed important changes the Trump administration has made, often in secret, to the way the government admits, tracks and detains immigrants. Most recently, she reported on the tough choices awaiting millions of Americans during the open enrollment season for health insurance plans, as Congress let lapse the extra subsidies that have made Affordable Care Act plans more affordable. She will continue to explore the stresses facing Americans as they navigate a fragmented health care system in a year when the number of people without health insurance is poised to markedly increase. Before joining KFF Health News, Amanda covered the Department of Health and Human Services for the Associated Press.

Allen Siegler

Allen Siegler is a mental health reporter at Mississippi Today. Before starting at the newsroom, he covered public health for Mountain State Spotlight in West Virginia and the city of Atlanta for Healthbeat. Allen earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale University and an applied epidemiology master of public health diploma from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Cris Villalonga-Vivoni

Cris Villalonga-Vivoni has been the health equity beat reporter for Hearst Media CT and CT Insider since 2024. Originally from Puerto Rico, Cris has a bachelor’s in English from Boston College and a master’s in Journalism from Northwestern University. They cover a wide range of topics related to health – from access to gender-affirming care to community-based interventions to funding uncertainty for nonprofits. Prior to their work in Connecticut, Cris was a Field Foundational Fellow at the Windy City Times, a Chicago-based LGBTQ+ newspaper. In 2022, they moved back to Connecticut and joined Record-Journal as its health equity reporter through Report for America. Cris has won several reporting awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists. In their spare time, they can be found hanging out on the couch with their cat, Binx.

Nicole Villalpando

Nicole Villalpando has been a journalist at the Austin American-Statesman for almost 27 years, and she became the health reporter four years ago. Many of the stories she writes focus on innovation in Austin’s growing health care scene, but she also looks for ways local governments and providers are working together to try to build access to care. She tries to break down complicated health issues into easy-to-understand articles on everything from the measles outbreak to understanding your health care bill. Nicole brings humanity to her stories, having had her own experiences navigating the health system with family members.