Anna Maria Barry-Jester

Reporter

Anna Maria Barry-Jester is a reporter with ProPublica covering global health. She joined ProPublica in 2022 from KFF Health News, where she covered public health.

Barry-Jester has reported extensively on public health and environmental issues, including the Flint water crisis, gun deaths in the United States, catastrophic flooding in Pakistan and the health impacts of pollutants in India. She spent several years documenting and reporting the first international news stories on an epidemic of chronic kidney disease affecting agricultural workers in Central America and Southeast Asia for the Center for Public Integrity and other outlets. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she reported on the troubled public health response as well as the impact on state and local health departments for “This American Life,” the Los Angeles Times and other news organizations.

Barry-Jester’s work has been honored with a Gerald Loeb Award, a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, an AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award, the Investigative Data Journalism prize from the Online News Association and a communications award from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, among others.

Facing Unchecked Syphilis Outbreak, Great Plains Tribes Sought Federal Help. Months Later, No One Has Responded.

The syphilis rate among Indigenous people in the Great Plains is higher than at any point in 80 years of records. More than 3% of Native American babies born in South Dakota last year had the preventable and curable — but potentially fatal — disease.

May 7, 5 a.m. EDT

Syphilis Is Killing Babies. The U.S. Government Is Failing to Stop the Disease From Spreading.

The only drug that treats syphilis during pregnancy is in short supply. Untreated, the disease can pass to newborns, killing them or leaving them with disabilities. As cases rise sharply, the government isn’t doing much to prevent shortages.

March 4, 5 a.m. EST

How a Big Pharma Company Stalled a Potentially Lifesaving Vaccine in Pursuit of Bigger Profits

A vaccine against tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest infectious disease, has never been closer to reality, with the potential to save millions of lives. But its development slowed after its corporate owner focused on more profitable vaccines.

Oct. 4, 2023, 5 a.m. EDT

The CDC Scientist Who Couldn’t Get Monkeypox Treatment

As a Black man and a senior CDC scientist, William L. Jeffries IV knows a lot about health inequities and infectious diseases in America. Still, it took visits to 3 doctors — and a desperate call to a colleague — for him to get treatment for monkeypox.

Oct. 5, 2022, 6 a.m. EDT