Helen Branswell

Helen Branswell is a Canadian infectious diseases and global health reporter at Stat News. Branswell spent fifteen years as a medical reporter at The Canadian Press, where she led coverage of the Ebola, Zika, SARS and swine flu pandemics. She joined Stat News at its founding 2015, leading the website's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 1978, Branswell received a B.A. in English literature the St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada. When asked how she wound up in journalism she replied: "I fell into journalism, I was not somebody who had worked at a high school newspaper or college newspaper or anything. I just didn't know what to do after getting a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. And somebody said, "What can you do?" And I said, "I think I can write." And so, I started freelancing for the local paper in the small town I lived in at the time in Eastern Canada at $15 a story. And the rest is history, but with a lot of moves and a lot of different opportunities along the way." Avian influenza, Zika, Middle East respiratory syndrome and swine flu pandemics. In 2004 Branswell was a Knight Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control.

In 2011 Branswell was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Here she concentrated on Polio eradication, with a focus on how India is fighting the spread of poliovirus. During an interview with the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Branswell provided an overview of her experience on reporting during pandemics. This report included advice on which stories to cover and which not cover, how to identify reliable sources and how to prepare for interviews with researchers. a health news website which had launched that year. Branswell is a popular science communicator; she was often recommended as an important health journalist to follow on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. She was selected as a Harvard Medical School media fellow in 2019.

Coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic Branswell led the Stat News reporting on the coronavirus pandemic. She first started sharing concerns about the emerging outbreak on December 31, 2019. By January 4 Branswell had written her first article on SARS-CoV-2 for Stat News, predicting that it could be "a new coronavirus". Sanofi have experience in the development of a SARS vaccination, as well as the ability to do large-scale manufacture, which Branswell believes is crucial to produce vaccinations for people all over the world. She questioned why Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control, was so silent throughout the outbreak, whereas they provided regular briefings during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

Fellowships and awards 1992: University of Toronto, Southam journalism fellow 2004: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Knight Fellow 2011: Harvard University, Nieman Fellow: Nieman Global Health Fellowship 2020: George Polk Journalism Award for Public Service. In the announcement of the award, the reporting for which she won the award was described as follows: "Branswell tracked the spread of the virus in 161 articles — more than three a week —[articles] that were almost uniformly timely and astute." 2021: Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, shared with Amy Maxmen 2023: Carleton University, Doctor of Laws, honoris causa