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Laura Santhanam
Health Reporter & Coordinating Producer for Polling
Fellowships Received
Laura Santhanam is a Washington D.C.-based health reporter and coordinating producer for polling for PBS NewsHour, and a 2023 Senior Fellow for the Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship. An award-winning journalist, she uses narrative and numbers to tell stories. She previously worked as a newspaper reporter at the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Arizona Republic and as a media analyst at Pew Research Center. A native of Tupelo, Mississippi, she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and history from the University of Mississippi and a master’s degree in public policy from American University. She was a Center for Health Journalism 2022 National Fellow.
Articles
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A patient who dramatically illustrated the story’s whole premise wanted to back out at the last minute. What's a reporter to do?
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Topics
A win for Medicaid expansion in South Dakota is a victory for public health, policy experts say, but now comes the work of ensuring the people who are eligible actually get enrolled.
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Topics
On Election Day, South Dakotans will have the option on their ballot to expand Medicaid coverage.
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Topics
Across the state, 16,000 adults are uninsured because they can’t afford private coverage, but their incomes disqualify them from Medicaid.
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Topics
A new state poll finds that supporters currently outweigh the opposition, but a large percentage have not made up their minds.
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A new reporting project explores how far politics goes in separating the health of a pregnant person from that of the fetus they carry.