Behind the Story: How to unmask a deadly open secret
This edition of Behind the Story profiles not just a story, but a reporter who drives change, Paste BN investigative journalist Alison Young. You can check out her work here and her Twitter here.
Investigative journalist Alison Young maintains a meticulous organization system for her reporting. She has to, otherwise information could become lost. It may seem quirky -- having "all kinds of folder systems that help me keep track of the people I'm encountering," as she describes it.
But it's crucial when some stories take four years to report fully, like Young's recent investigative series, Deadly Deliveries:
- Hospitals know how to protect mothers. They just aren't doing it.
- 'I am one of the 50,000'
- How hospitals are failing mothers in 13 graphics
- 'Mommy went to heaven'
She credits her organization as an important tool, helping her dive into the reporting and focus on finding the truth.
Young's focus, while at Paste BN, has been largely on health, the environment and consumer issues. In recent years, Young has investigated biological laboratories that work with dangerous pathogens and revealing safety flaws in those systems, as well as dietary supplements being tainted with prescription pharmaceuticals.
“I really care deeply about shining a light on things that the public doesn’t know about —issues that are important and potentially dangerous to them, and then revealing how things could be better,” Young said.
That's why thousands of women suffering life-altering injuries or dying during childbirth was so important for Young to write about, especially because it was oftentimes at the hands of the hospital.
“How could it be that women are dying in childbirth at a growing rate in this country, it’s going down in other countries, and that somehow are medical care system could be playing a role?” Young said. “The question I wanted to go out and ask is, ‘Is that the case?’ And so that is what we have been pursuing.”
For four years, Young collected thousands of pages of court documents and hospital records. She interviewed women and their families about the heartbreaking reality of childbirth complications.
She gave a voice the 50,000 women each year that suffer severe injuries after surviving potentially deadly deliveries.
"What I found pretty early on in my reporting is that it's been an open secret within the hospital industry for many years that women are dying that don't need to die because hospitals and healthcare providers have failed to provide the best treatments that have been known to save their lives," Young said.
Since the release of the investigation, Young has heard from nearly 250 women who suffered life-threatening injuries from childbirth — many anxious to share their own experience.
"One of the things that I've seen on social media is people sharing the story and saying, 'this is like what happened to me,'" Young said. "I think it's helped empower people to have voices to talk about this."