Elijah Hurewitz-Ravitch, Contributing Photographer

From searching for mosquito larvae in Ethiopian sewage ditches and goat sheds to sliding down tree trunks to test Colombian gold prospectors for leishmaniasis, Stephanie Nolen, the global health reporter for the New York Times, takes a unique approach to her beat. 

Early in the afternoon on Wednesday, Nolen gave a Yale School of Public Health Dean’s Lecture titled “Fatally Flawed: Stories from the Frontlines of the Growing Disparity in Global Access to Medicines.” Later, Nolen joined Davenport Head of College Anjelica Gonzalez for a College Tea conversation.

At both events, Nolen spoke about her approach to global health coverage and career trajectory. She also discussed the gaping inequities in worldwide access to malaria and cholera vaccines and HIV treatment.

Much of her SPH lecture focused on malaria, which, she noted, remains one of the biggest killers of children worldwide. 

The malaria vaccine, which Nolen said had been in development for 35 years, was only made widely available in 2021. And the story behind the vaccine’s creation, “helps to illustrate some of the big problems that we don’t have figured out,” she said. 

Nolen recalled watching the vaccine’s rollout and wondering why, exactly, it took so long. She explained that although the science was complicated it was primarily outside factors like the politics of philanthropy and the convoluted bureaucracy of regulatory approval that were to blame. 

“When you look back and think about how many times along the way we almost didn’t get the vaccine and the whole thing almost fell apart over the question of who was going to pay for it — I find that very troubling,” Nolen said.

For decades, Nolen has covered the tolls that diseases like HIV, cholera and malaria have had on low-income countries, and the delay in making vaccines and treatment available. Each time, the same problems of access crop up — Nolen described a broken system in which drug manufacturers are not incentivized to produce medications for “poor people.”

Just a few months ago, she filed the same story she has been writing for much of her career. A new HIV drug, lenacapavir, was found to be 100 percent effective in a clinical trial among African women. But in the U.S., the drug costs $42,250 per patient per year, and there is no plan for how it might be distributed at a lower cost to African countries. 

One of the central struggles of her job, Nolen said, is making confusing scientific topics digestible for the average NYT reader.

“I always feel like I would want my granny to be able to pick it up and understand it,” she said. 

This involves a delicate compromise between precision and accessibility, which sometimes upsets professionals in the science and medicine fields. 

In practice, this means reading the latest papers, translating their jargon and telling her readers what they mean and why they should care.

For Nolen, reporting on global public health goes far beyond medicine. Health stories, she said, almost always have just as much to do with politics, the economy, justice and individual relationships as they do with science and germs. 

She added that her reporting is guided by a simple precept from her grandmother — “you don’t have anything if you don’t have your health.” 

Meanwhile, she said, the key to getting a broad base of readers interested in potentially niche coverage is storytelling. Interesting, unique people, or characters, and “creepy bits” — like worms — tend to keep readers engaged. 

Nolen also observed a growing public distrust in science and health journalism in particular.

“It’s gotten way harder now that everybody’s doing their own research — everybody’s found somebody on TikTok. People just reject that you know what you’re talking about out of the gate,” she said.

Nolen explained that she constantly receives emails from people who doubt the accuracy of her reporting or think that she is “in the pocket” of Big Pharma — despite her focus on underserved communities whose needs are rarely met by large pharmaceutical companies.

Lately, she explained, NYT has focused on increasing the transparency around its reporting. Still, she added, health journalism is subject to the same debates around objectivity, independence, bias and ‘bothsidesism’ faced by all news outlets. 

Both talks also raised questions about the role journalists play in covering overlooked communities. 

“I don’t have a lot to say about solutions — I’m just the storyteller, I’m just here to tell you what’s going on. I didn’t go into policy for a reason,” Nolen said.

Occasionally, though, Nolen sees the direct effects her work has on consequential decisions. 

Recently, she told the News, she wrote a story on the shortage of mpox vaccines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to “embarrass” the World Health Organization into approving the vaccine through a process called prequalification. 

Mayur M. Desai SPH ’94 GRD ’97 felt that the talk was inspiring and impactful. 

“[Her work] tells a story of the challenges that we face in bringing health solutions to the most vulnerable populations around the world,” Desai said. “It’s so important that people like Stephanie Nolen are telling the story.”

Zoe Beketova MED ’25, another attendee, found Nolen’s commitment to her work particularly unique.

In her eyes, most reporters do not venture outside their comfort zones. 

“Really getting into the dirty stuff and doing it herself rather than from a safe distance — she’s really seeing it and getting involved and hearing people’s stories properly,” Beketova said.

Nolen has been a reporter for over 30 years.