Usha Lee McFarling

National Science Correspondent, STAT

Usha Lee McFarling is a national science correspondent for STAT, covering health disparities and the intersection of race with science and medicine. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, and the San Antonio Light. Her work on the diseased state of the world’s oceans earned the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and her coverage of health disparities has earned an Edward R. Murrow award as well as awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2024 she was awarded CASW’s Victor Cohn Prize for excellence in medical science reporting and the Bernard Lo, MD award in bioethics. One of her stories recognized by the Cohn Prize judges, which documents how white scholars overstepped scholars of color in the newly popular field of health equity research, is featured on Showcase.