The Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism announced yesterday that ProPublica reporter Neil Bedi has won the 2022 Barlett & Steele Outstanding Young Journalist Award.

His series, “HeartWare: Deadly Malfunctions, FDA Inaction and Vulnerable Patients,” which he worked on with engagement reporters Maryam Jameel and Maya Miller, examined the HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device, a mechanical heart pump that was surgically embedded in thousands of desperate people with severe cardiac failure. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the device maker, Medtronic, agreed to take the unusual step of removing the HeartWare device from the market in June 2021, noting that a competing pump had better patient outcomes. But Bedi knew that wasn’t the full story.

Bedi conducted multiple analyses and found that the FDA had received thousands of reports of suspicious deaths and injuries linked to the HeartWare device. He then sifted through more than 1,000 anonymized reports to identify horrific deaths caused by sudden device malfunctions. Among the cases he found: a teenage patient who vomited blood as his mother struggled to restart a defective pump and a patient whose heart tissue was left charred after the device short-circuited and overheated.

Bedi also found that the government knew about problems with the device for years. In page after page of reports from the FDA, federal inspectors warned of potentially deadly problems that patients were never told about.

The journalists reached out to current HeartWare patients through online communities and support groups. These patients could not replace the devices with alternative pumps because of the risks of the required open-heart surgery.

After the stories were published, Medtronic updated its website and reached out to patients to offer expanded financial assistance for costs like transportation and copays.

“Black Snow: Big Sugar’s Burning Problem,” a Local Reporting Network project by ProPublica and The Palm Beach Post, also won the bronze prize in the regional/local category. In the series, Palm Beach Post reporter Lulu Ramadan, along with ProPublica engagement reporter Maya Miller, news applications developer Ash Ngu and video reporter Nadia Sussman, showed how regulators allow the sugar industry to burn crops at the expense of communities of color in Florida’s heartland, despite internal research and complaints from residents.

View the full list of winners.