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 , 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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More than half of people surveyed said ratings of doctors on the Web helped them pick which physician to see. Yet many ratings are based on only a few patient reviews, which can skew the results. -
Get Covered Illinois, the state's health insurance exchange, has hired Onion Labs, The Onion's in-house ad team, to develop banner ads, a video and other online material to persuade young people to sign up for insurance coverage. -
The Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y., closed Friday afternoon so that cleaning crews from a company that specializes in disaster responses can scour the place after an outbreak of intestinal illness. Norovirus appears to be the culprit.
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The drugstore chain says halting the sale of tobacco products could reduce revenue by $2 billion a year. CVS says it's looking for ways to make up for the lost business. But the value of the good public relations from the move could easily surpass the costs.
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An NPR poll finds that just 7 percent of Americans say concussion risks are too great to continue offering football as a high school sport. -
Researchers focused on the activities outside business hours. And they found that your behavior beyond whatever you're doing to make a living appears to affect your chances of heart failure. To minimize the risk, walk when you can and sit only when you must. -
Acetaminophen overdoses, many of which are inadvertent, are a leading cause of acute liver failure. People taking several kinds of drugs may not realize that more than one of them can contain acetaminophen.
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While the proportion of the world's population that smokes has shrunk, the total number of smokers on the earth continues to rise. In 2012, nearly a billion people smoked daily, compared with 721 million in 1980. -
Keep the dog away when you're shoveling snow. Some can't resist jumping toward the flying flakes, and a dog is no match for a shovel blade. The sweet taste of antifreeze can be enticing for pets, but ethylene glycol, the main antifreeze, is also quite toxic. Clean up spills and drips. -
The Food and Drug Administration just approved United Therapeutics' Orenitram, a pill for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. Martine Rothblatt founded the company to develop treatments for life-threatening illness that afflicted her daughter.
