Helen Branswell | |
|---|---|
| Education | St. Thomas University |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Years active | 1986-present |
| Known for | Health, Infectious Disease and Pandemic Journalism |
Helen Branswell is a Canadianinfectious diseases and global health reporter atStat News.[1] Branswell spent fifteen years as a medical reporter atThe Canadian Press, where she led coverage of theEbola,Zika,SARS andswine flu pandemics.[2] She joined Stat News at its founding 2015, leading the website's coverage of theCOVID-19 pandemic.[3]
Branswell is fromCanada and has family inOttawa.[4][5] In 1978, Branswell received aB.A. inEnglish literature theSt. Thomas University inNew 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."[1]
Branswell joinedThe Canadian Press in 1986, where she served as London correspondent for five years. She started out in general news, working as a political reporter and foreign correspondent.[4] She switched to medical reporting in 2000, and became well known for her coverage of global health outbreaks, starting with the first2002–2004 SARS outbreak where she reported "on the only real outbreak outside of Asia."[4][6] Branswell led the coverage of theSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS),Ebola,[7][8]Avian influenza,Zika,Middle East respiratory syndrome andswine flu pandemics.[9] In 2004 Branswell was a Knight Fellow at theCenters for Disease Control.[10]
In 2011 Branswell was a Nieman Fellow atHarvard University.[11][12] Here she concentrated onPolio eradication, with a focus on how India is fighting the spread ofpoliovirus.[13][14] During an interview with theNieman Foundation for Journalism, Branswell provided an overview of her experience on reporting during pandemics.[15] 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.[15]The Canadian Press did not have a large budget and Branswell wrote most of her articles from her office or home.[15]
In 2015 Branswell left The Canadian Press to joinStat News,[16][3] 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 onTwitter during the COVID-19 pandemic.[17][18][19] She was selected as aHarvard Medical School media fellow in 2019.[20]
Branswell led the Stat News reporting on thecoronavirus pandemic. She first started sharing concerns about the emerging outbreak on December 31, 2019.[21][22] Branswell had read aProMED-mail posting that described an unexplainedpneumonia inWuhan, which concerned her because of its similarities to SARS.[21] Two days later, in early January 2020, Branswell tweeted, "Not liking the look of this".[22] By January 4 Branswell had written her first article onSARS-CoV-2 for Stat News, predicting that it could be "a new coronavirus".[22]
Branswell used her Twitter feed to discuss recent developments as well as debunking misinformation. She remarked that, for the scientific community, this virus was different to other pandemics, because the rise ofpreprint serves meant that journalists and the public had access to data and research much faster than before.[21] She covered the development of aCOVID-19 vaccine, interviewing the Head of Vaccine research atSanofi, who estimated that it would take three years before the vaccine was widely available.[23] 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 whyRobert 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.[24][25]
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