Scott Hensley
Scott Hensley edits stories about health, biomedical research and pharmaceuticals for NPR's Science desk. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has led the desk's reporting on the development of vaccines against the coronavirus.
Hensley has worked on award-winning investigations in collaboration with journalistic partners.
He was the lead NPR editor on an investigation with the Center for Public Integrity in 2018 that exposed drug industry influence on the choices of preferred medicines by Medicaid programs. The work won the 2019 Gerald Loeb Award for audio reporting.
In 2017, Hensley was the lead NPR editor on an investigation with Kaiser Health News that showed how the pharmaceutical industry exploits government incentives intended to encourage the development of treatments for rare diseases. The stories won the 2019 digital award from the National Institute for Health Care Management.
Hensley has been editing in his current role since 2019. He joined NPR in 2009 to launch Shots, a blog that expanded to become a digital destination for NPR health coverage.
Before NPR, Hensley was a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal. He was the founding editor of The Wall Street Journal Health Blog, which focused on the intersection of health and business. As a reporter, he covered the drug industry and the Human Genome Project.
Hensley served on the board of the Association of Health Care Journalists from 2012 to 2020.
He has a bachelor's degree in natural sciences from Johns Hopkins University and a master's in journalism from Columbia University.
Before becoming a journalist, Hensley worked in the medical device industry. He remains, now and forever, a lover of Dobermans, lacrosse and Callinectes sapidus.
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Chemicals in cigarette smoke can settle on clothes, furniture and walls. Researchers call this thirdhand smoke and say laboratory experiments suggest it could be hazardous. -
The battery-powered device sends electrical pulses through the skin of the forehead. People who used the headband in a study had fewer migraines and took less headache medicine. -
In the absence of evidence about what works best to discourage drug use among teens and kids, doctors are left with their own judgment and clinical experience to fall back on. -
Narcotic painkillers are risky for small kids. But so are some popular pills to treat diabetes, high blood pressure and irregular heartbeats. -
There was enough information for an influential panel of doctors, nurses and scientists to recommend against taking the antioxidants vitamin E and beta carotene to prevent heart attacks and cancer. -
More than half of people surveyed said ratings of doctors on the Web helped them pick which physician to see. Yet many ratings are based on only a few patient reviews, which can skew the results. -
Get Covered Illinois, the state's health insurance exchange, has hired Onion Labs, The Onion's in-house ad team, to develop banner ads, a video and other online material to persuade young people to sign up for insurance coverage. -
The Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y., closed Friday afternoon so that cleaning crews from a company that specializes in disaster responses can scour the place after an outbreak of intestinal illness. Norovirus appears to be the culprit.
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The drugstore chain says halting the sale of tobacco products could reduce revenue by $2 billion a year. CVS says it's looking for ways to make up for the lost business. But the value of the good public relations from the move could easily surpass the costs. -
An NPR poll finds that just 7 percent of Americans say concussion risks are too great to continue offering football as a high school sport.
