Cohn Prize honoree Helen Branswell remembered for sharp, authoritative reporting

CASW mourns the loss of Helen Branswell, a winner of the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting and a journalist known for decades of fearless, authoritative coverage of epidemics and pandemics. Awarded the prize in 2021 for her extraordinary depth of knowledge and her prescient, sharp, high-impact coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, Branswell died October 13 at 69 after a recurrence of breast cancer.

Ed Yong, winner of the 2020 Cohn Prize for his work at The Atlantic, said Branswell will be “missed immeasurably.” Branswell and Yong both rang alarm bells about the pandemic and challenged U.S. policymakers about the nation’s poor preparedness before and after the public began to take notice.

“No reporter on the infectious-disease beat was as respected, and deservedly so, as Helen Branswell,” Yong said. “She wrote with consummate clarity, she spoke truth to power, and she worked without ego. I admired her so much, and I’m struggling to accept that she’s gone—and that we’re going to have to live through a future in which epidemics are more common without her unerring reporting to act as a guide. Helen was the best of us. She never missed.”

Dubbed by Esquire “the one who called it” for a New Year’s Eve tweet in 2019 that made her the first U.S.-based journalist to post about the coronavirus pandemic, Branswell filed no less than 161 articles on COVID in 2020 alone. Her relentless coverage earned her that year’s George Polk Award for Public Service and selection as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting, along with her STAT colleagues Andrew Joseph and Sharon Begley.

The Cohn Prize judges noted that deep research and years of experience reporting on infectious disease and global health had equipped Branswell to cut through misinformation and confusion as COVID spread. When she joined STAT at its founding in 2015, she had already covered the SARS crisis, the West African Ebola epidemic, sexually transmitted diseases and antibiotic resistance, the H151 avian and swine flu pandemics, and MERS for The Canadian Press.

Born in Quebec, Helen Branswell worked as a freelance journalist and a local newspaper reporter before joining The Canadian Press in 1986. She was reporting in Toronto when the SARS epidemic provided her a first experience in covering infectious diseases. She built her knowledge as a Knight Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, as well as through deep research and reporting on the beat. She shared the 2021 Cohn Prize with Amy Maxmen, who covered the pandemic as a senior reporter for Nature.

Stephanie M. Lee, a 2022 Cohn Prize winner cited for her investigative reporting for Buzzfeed News during the COVID-19 pandemic, called Branswell a legend. “Her body of work was that of a true expert—rigorous, clear, nuanced, deeply knowledgeable, and ahead of the curve.

“Whenever I wanted to understand what was happening with an outbreak, whether it was COVID or anything else,” Lee said, “I turned to her coverage first because she so reliably kept her finger on the pulse.”

Medical reporter Lawrence K. Altman, who shared the first Cohn Prize in 2000, met Branswell during the SARS epidemic in 2002. He told The New York Times Branswell “had the ability to cut through the fog and B.S. to get to the heart of whatever was being discussed. She asked questions that often surprised scientists, questions about issues that the scientists hadn’t thought about.”

Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, praised Branswell’s “unwavering commitment to evidence, science, and truth” in comments for a STAT obituary. “At a moment when misinformation competes with facts, her reporting was a trusted source of clarity, honesty, and insight.”

Usha McFarling, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT and a Cohn Prize winner in 2024, added that however fierce and dogged a reporter Branswell was, “she was such a generous and supportive colleague and friend. She’d give you the shirt off her back.”

Jon Cohen, a correspondent for Science magazine who won the 2012 Victor Cohn Prize, met Branswell over email when covering a flu pandemic in 2009. The two traded compliments but they were competitors who, from early on, “needled each other mercilessly,” Cohen recalled. “She assailed me for reporting on a possible Canadian origin—and it turned out to be a false lead.” Their work continued to overlap as they covered Ebola, Zika, and of course COVID. “Helen transcended colleague status, and we became close friends, even therapists for each other at times.

“I will so miss her wit, compassion, insights, generosity, and ever-reliable bullshit detector,” Cohen said. “She made my world—and the world at large—a better place.”

Cohen, fellow correspondent and 2026 Cohn Prize winner Kai Kupferschmidt, and Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink cover infectious diseases and global health for Science. By the time COVID arrived, the three had formed a support group with Branswell. As the pandemic crisis deepened, Kupferschmidt recalled, the four “would all assemble on our little Zoom squares to remind each other that there was a world out there beyond case counts and clinical trials, lockdowns and deaths.”

Branswell, Kupferschmidt said, was the rare journalist “who saw the world clearly and had a knack for cutting through the bullshit, yet never lacked for empathy… her personal qualities were the same that shone through in her writing.”

A dream of gathering the “Gang of Four” after the pandemic was realized just before Branswell returned to Canada last year, when they all attended Kupferschmidt’s wedding. It was only the second time all four met in person. “It was a blast,” he said, “and it makes me sad beyond words that there will be no third time.”

Enserink visited Branswell last September in Ottawa. He found her “weakened but sharp as ever, and still working.” Over lunch they discussed “the outbreaks du jour—Ebola, measles—who might succeed Tedros at WHO, and the political madness in the U.S.”

“Later that afternoon,” Enserink recalled, “she reflected on her life and work. Finding a job at STAT was the best thing that happened to her career. She would never brag, but she was grateful for the awards she had won—and so richly deserved—since the pandemic. She was also happy to have moved back to Ottawa—where she was close to family and in the Canadian health system—just in time.”

“‘What can you say when you see a dear friend for the last time? I just thanked her—for everything she had done.”