Hannah Furfaro (@hannahfurfaro), mental health reporter for The Seattle Times, has been selected as the winner of the 2024 Sharon Begley Award for Science Reporting.
Furfaro is the third recipient of the award, established in 2022 by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing to recognize and support reporting and writing that embodies the high standards exemplified by the science journalist Sharon Begley (1956–2021). The winner receives a $20,000 grant to support a significant reporting project.
Furfaro plans to undertake a book project focused on rare diseases. The project will draw on her experiences as a patient and as a reporter observing the broader payoffs that have come to science from research into rare conditions. She argues that “it’s time to rethink what we know about what’s rare, and how we value knowledge that might come from better understanding those on the fringes.” Ken Armstrong (@bykenarmstrong), who works at Bloomberg as senior editor and narrative coach for global investigations, will serve as project mentor.
“One of the distinguishing characteristics of Sharon Begley’s reporting and writing was the way she focused on the people behind scientific discoveries and controversies, and Hannah’s work reflects that focus as well,” said Alan Boyle, co-chair of the Sharon Begley Award judging committee and immediate past president of CASW. “I can’t wait to read the book she’ll be writing with our support.”
Hannah Furfaro
Furfaro was selected from a competitive international field of mid-career science journalists working in staff and freelance roles in online, print, audio, and video. The judges praised her work as “impactful and important,” noting that her investigative reporting has led to legislative changes and praising a journalism career characterized by “integrity, hard work, a collegial attitude, and respect for colleagues.” They were impressed by her passion for her project, the research she has completed, and the way she proposes to weave her own story into the narrative thread.
In recommending Furfaro for the award, Diana Samuels, mental health project editor at The Seattle Times, wrote that Furfaro treats her scientific subject matter “with careful rigor and a passion for helping others.” She recalled a major 2022 reporting project, “Housed at the Hospital,” in which Furfaro’s investigation found that children were being kept in emergency rooms without needed psychiatric care because there was nowhere else for them to go. The series helped win a national award and spurred state legislation to get help for the children.
Katie Moisse, former news editor for the online magazine Spectrum (now The Transmitter), served as Furfaro’s editor there and recalled that she “proved to be a tough reporter, always ready to hold a critical lens to research backed by big grants and powerful corporations.” Moisse added: “She stood out as a journalist committed to careful sourcing and deep reporting… What she lacked in scientific expertise she made up for in ability to unpack complex theories and process, root them in context, and illuminate their relevance.”
While at Spectrum, Furfaro traveled to a remote town in the Colombian Andes that is home to the world’s largest known cluster of people with a rare genetic form of intellectual disability called Fragile X syndrome. That story demonstrated the importance of rare diseases to science and medicine, and informed her book plan. It also, said Moisse, demonstrated Furfaro’s commitment to covering underserved and marginalized communities, and showed how she “consistently finds opportunities to infuse humanity without sacrificing scientific rigor.”
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism in 2011, Furfaro won statewide awards as a staff reporter at The Ames (Iowa) Tribune and The Fresno (CA) Bee and wrote for The Associated Press before enrolling in graduate training in science and environmental journalism. Her master’s studies at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism were supported in part by a Taylor/Blakeslee Graduate Fellowship from CASW. As an independent journalist during and after graduate school, she contributed to an environmental investigation for The Guardian and wrote features for The Wall Street Journal and Audubon before joining Spectrum as a health and science reporter in 2017. She joined The Seattle Times in 2019.
Furfaro’s work has appeared in Science, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Slate, and many other publications and was selected for inclusion in The Best American Science and Nature Writing in 2019. She has been a Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism and a USC Annenberg Health Data Fellow and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), and Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ). Additional recognitions include the Best of the West explanatory journalism award, the George F. Gruner Award for Meritorious Public Service in Journalism, and the National Press Foundation’s Carolyn C. Mattingly Award for Mental Health Reporting.
The Sharon Begley Award judges cited Furfaro’s service as a mentor and on a diversity and inclusion task force at The Seattle Times. She is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists, the National Association of Science Writers, and Investigative Reporters and Editors. She has spoken widely on science, education, and mental health reporting and been a Grand Rounds guest lecturer at the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry.
The Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award
The Sharon Begley Award was created by CASW in 2021 in collaboration with Sharon Begley’s husband, Ned Groth, a scientist, author, and environmental health consultant. It is supported by a dedicated fund established in Begley’s honor. More than 250 private donations have been received to date, adding up to more than $880,000. The first award was presented in 2022 to Bijal Trivedi, senior editor for science at National Geographic. The second award, in 2023, went to independent documentary filmmaker John D. Sutter.
At the time of her death in January 2021, Sharon Begley was the senior science writer at STAT, Boston Globe Media’s health and medicine news site, covering genetics, cancer, neuroscience, and other fields of basic biomedical research. Begley’s work was recognized posthumously when she was named a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist along with two STAT colleagues for early reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic. Among her many other awards was CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting. STAT has also honored her by creating the Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellowship.
Begley was previously the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters, The Wall Street Journal‘s first science columnist, and the longtime science editor at Newsweek. She joined Newsweek upon her graduation from Yale University. During her nearly 30 years at the newsweekly, she served as science columnist and editor and as a contributing writer at the magazine. Her column for The Wall Street Journal ran from 2002 to 2007, when Newsweek recruited her back, and from 2012 to 2015 she was the senior health and science correspondent at Reuters.
The judging panel for the third Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award was co-chaired by Alan Boyle, CASW immediate past president and a longtime online journalist focusing on space and physical sciences; and Betsy Mason, a freelance science journalist and CASW board secretary. Judges were STAT Managing Editor Gideon Gil; bestselling author and independent journalist Claudia Kalb; Seth Mnookin, author and director of the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing; Ashley Smart, associate director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, senior editor of Undark, and CASW treasurer; Richard Stone, senior science editor for HHMI’s Tangled Bank Studios and a CASW board member; and Sharon Begley Award winner Bijal Trivedi.
