Scott Hensley
Scott Hensley edits stories about health, biomedical research and pharmaceuticals for NPR's Science desk. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has led the desk's reporting on the development of vaccines against the coronavirus.
Hensley has worked on award-winning investigations in collaboration with journalistic partners.
He was the lead NPR editor on an investigation with the Center for Public Integrity in 2018 that exposed drug industry influence on the choices of preferred medicines by Medicaid programs. The work won the 2019 Gerald Loeb Award for audio reporting.
In 2017, Hensley was the lead NPR editor on an investigation with Kaiser Health News that showed how the pharmaceutical industry exploits government incentives intended to encourage the development of treatments for rare diseases. The stories won the 2019 digital award from the National Institute for Health Care Management.
Hensley has been editing in his current role since 2019. He joined NPR in 2009 to launch Shots, a blog that expanded to become a digital destination for NPR health coverage.
Before NPR, Hensley was a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal. He was the founding editor of The Wall Street Journal Health Blog, which focused on the intersection of health and business. As a reporter, he covered the drug industry and the Human Genome Project.
Hensley served on the board of the Association of Health Care Journalists from 2012 to 2020.
He has a bachelor's degree in natural sciences from Johns Hopkins University and a master's in journalism from Columbia University.
Before becoming a journalist, Hensley worked in the medical device industry. He remains, now and forever, a lover of Dobermans, lacrosse and Callinectes sapidus.
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The latest NPR-IBM Watson Health poll found that 29% of people said they were often angry when checking the news. Another 42% said the news sometimes made them angry.
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The latest NPR-IBM Watson Health Poll finds that medical visits for symptoms of infections are common and that many people get an antibiotic under those circumstances. But a talk is in order first. -
A third of people under 35 said cost led them to put off some form of health care, compared with only 8 percent of people 65 and older, a poll by NPR and IBM Watson Health found. -
Please help us make Shots more relevant and useful for you by taking our research survey. You shouldn't need more than 10 or 15 minutes to give us your feedback. -
While a majority of Americans know about naloxone, there is confusion about the fact that in most places a prescription isn't required to obtain the emergency overdose treatment. -
A surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Gawande is probably best known for his work writing about how to improve quality and lower costs in health care. -
We asked Americans about genetic testing in the latest NPR-Truven Health Analytics Health Poll. People were generally OK with sharing the information with relatives and doctors, but not employers. -
Details are scarce, but the companies said they want to help their employees get high-quality health care at a reasonable cost. Will this consortium have better luck than those that have preceded it?
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A July letter from Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini to the Justice Department said the company would pull back from health insurance exchanges if the government opposed the company's merger with Humana.
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Among the quarter of American adults who have had a concussion, most said they had sought medical treatment, according to the results of a poll conducted by NPR and Truven Health Analytics.
