A team of AP's Michelle Smith and Kaiser Health News journalists spent months reporting exclusively on hundreds of public health leaders — many of whom have left their jobs after facing threats and harassment during the pandemic.
AP Providence, Rhode Island, reporter Michelle Smith was working on another project in June when she created a spreadsheet with the names of a dozen or so public health officials who had quit, retired or been fired. Sensing a trend, Smith and reporters Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Hannah Recht and Lauren Weber at Kaiser Health News continued to track those departures as the pandemic worsened and the backlash against public health restrictions became more strident.
With yearend approaching and pandemic deaths mounting even as vaccines were arriving, the reporting team dove deep to take measure of how the U.S. public health system was holding up — or whether it was even sustainable.
The journalists contacted officials in all 50 states and interviewed dozens of people. They found that 1 in 8 Americans lives in a community that has lost a local health department leader, leaving a leadership vacuum as the nation enters the worst period of the pandemic and a mass vaccination campaign. The team also found organized efforts to erode public health powers, including legislation to that effect that has been crafted in 24 states.
Protesters carry rifles near the steps of the Michigan State Capitol building in Lansing during a rally against coronavirus measures in the state.
AP Photo / Paul Sancya
Tisha Coleman, public health administrator for Linn County, Kansas, walks past the Linn County courthouse in Mound City, Dec. 7, 2020. In this community with no hospital, she’s failed to persuade her neighbors to wear masks and take precautions against COVID-19, even as cases rise. In return, she's been harassed, sued, vilified and called a Democrat — an insult in her circles.
AP Photo / Charlie Riedel
Tisha Coleman, public health administrator for Linn County, Kansas, talks to a resident in front of her family’s hardware store in Mound City, Dec. 7, 2020. Her husband refused her recommendation to mandate masks inside their store.COVID-19.
AP Photo / Charlie Riedel
Tisha Coleman, right, poses with her mother, Nina Worthington, in an undated family photo. Coleman fought to hold back tears while describing her 71-year-old mother, a former health care worker who died of COVID-19 on Dec. 13, 2020. Coleman and her husband both contracted COVID-19 and likely spread it to her mother.
Photo courtesy Tisha Coleman via AP
Tisha Coleman, public health administrator for Linn County, Kansas, stands in front of her Pleasanton office, Dec. 7, 2020.
AP Photo / Charlie Riedel
President Donald Trump waves to supporters including one holding a sign reading “Fire Fauci” as his motorcade drives past in Allentown, Pa., May 14, 2020. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, became a target of protests against public health restrictions.
AP Photo / Matt Rourke
Kelly Aberasturi, vice-chair commissioner of the board of Southwest District Health, stands outside the agency’s office in Caldwell, Idaho, Nov. 24, 2020. Aberasturi believes the dangers of the coronavirus were overhyped by the media to hurt President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.
AP Photo / Otto Kitsinger
Protesters gather outside the offices of Central District Health in Boise, Idaho, Dec. 15, 2020. A proposed public health order that would have included a mask mandate for Idaho’s most populated region was voted down as hundreds protested the measure.
AP Photo / Otto Kitsinger
Protesters against mask mandates gather outside the offices of Central District Health in Boise, Idaho, Dec. 15, 2020.
AP Photo / Otto Kitsinger
Karen Koenemann holds a box of books after she resigned from her position as head of the Pitkin County, Colorado, public health department in Aspen, Dec. 4, 2020. Koenemann, who said she was planning to take a position with a health nonprofit in her native Alaska, said: “I have been working eight months, 12 hours a day, seven days a week — I’m really burnt out, really burnt out. … I am giving so much, so much of myself to this job and this community. And all I get is criticism and it just was like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ Life is too short.”
Kelsey Brunner / KHN via AP
The resulting story conveyed those stark findings but also included the human stories of these public servants who toiled through the pandemic only to be reviled by their neighbors — including the wrenching story of Tisha Coleman, whose husband would not even follow her recommendation to require masks in the family hardware store. The couple were both infected and likely spread it to Tisha’s mother, who died two days before publication. The team had developed such rapport with Coleman that she contacted the reporters shortly after her mother passed away.
The timely all-formats story, which included a data distribution, interactive graphics and a sidebar with portraits and quotes of a handful of public health officials, attracted attention and engagement. A number of news organizations used the data to localize stories for their readership.
For a deeply reported package that examines a vital component of the pandemic response, Smith, Barry-Jester, Recht and Weber earn this week’s Best of the States award.
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