Irena Hwang
I covered public health and the agencies that oversee it, including the FDA and CDC.
What I Covered
I used computational analysis tools to identify and quantify public health issues.
My Background
I joined ProPublica in 2021. Here, I’ve reported on a wide range of issues, including criminal justice, food safety, environmental justice and race.
Prior to ProPublica, I worked at NPR, The Associated Press and The Dallas Morning News. Before my career in journalism, I completed a doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford University, with a focus on bioinformatics and signal processing. I studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Seven Things to Know About ProPublica’s Investigation of the FDA’s Secret Gamble on Generic Drugs
ProPublica spent 14 months investigating the FDA’s oversight of foreign drugmakers that send medications to the U.S. These are the key takeaways.
Threat in Your Medicine Cabinet: The FDA’s Gamble on America’s Drugs
A ProPublica investigation found that for more than a decade, the FDA gave substandard factories banned from the United States a special pass to keep sending drugs to an unsuspecting public.
We Spent a Year Investigating How the FDA Let Risky Drugs Into the U.S. Market
Our investigation exposed a little-known practice inside the FDA that allowed more than 150 drugs or their ingredients into the U.S. over the past dozen years even though they were made at factories banned from shipping their products here.
Heritage Foundation Staffers Flood Federal Agencies With Thousands of Information Requests
The conservative think tank’s requests are clogging the pipeline at federal agencies in an apparent attempt to find employees a potential Trump administration would want to purge.
The Failure to Track Data on Stillbirths Undermines Efforts to Prevent Them
Fetal death records are often missing cause of death, race and other crucial information. ProPublica found that the problem is only getting worse.
How Many of Your State’s Lawmakers Are Women? If You Live in the Southeast, It Could Be Just 1 in 5.
A record number of women were elected to statehouses last year. But in the Southeast, where some legislatures are more than 80% male, representation is lagging as lawmakers pass bills that most impact women, like near-total abortion bans.
How We Used Machine Learning to Investigate Where Ebola May Strike
ProPublica spent months teaching a computer to analyze past Ebola outbreaks linked to deforestation. What we found reveals a weakness in the way that governments and public health experts are preparing for future pandemics.
The (Random) Forests for the Trees: How Our Spillover Model Works
ProPublica borrowed machine learning methods from academic research to better understand links between forest loss and spillover risk. The results were surprising, but led us to a story we wouldn’t have found otherwise.
Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia — Almost All by Just Six Right-Wing Activists
The recent transformation of the state’s election laws explicitly enabled citizens to file unlimited challenges to other voters’ registrations. Experts warn that election officials’ handling of some of those challenges may clash with federal law.
After Pandemic Delays, FDA Still Struggling to Inspect Foreign Drug Manufacturers
In the wake of recent deaths from bacteria-tainted eyedrops, a ProPublica analysis of FDA data reveals that the agency only inspected 6% of the overseas plants where drugs and their ingredients are produced in 2022.
Au bord de la catastrophe
Une simple clairière de forêt nous sépare de la prochaine pandémie mortelle. Mais nous n’essayons même pas de la prévenir.