For Immediate Release: Nov. 28, 2022
Media Contact: Maria Landron | [email protected]
Andrew Joseph to lead the outlet’s first international bureau
Elaine Chen and John Wilkerson join STAT’s expanding reporting team
BOSTON — STAT, the preeminent media company reporting on health, science, and medicine, today announced that STAT veteran Andrew Joseph will begin a new role as its first international correspondent early next year. Meanwhile, Elaine Chen has joined the team as the inaugural cardiovascular reporter and John Wilkerson as its newest Washington correspondent.
With the expansion of STAT’s D.C. team, STAT senior news editor Erin Mershon will also now have the additional title of Washington Bureau Chief.
Rick Berke, co-founder and executive editor of STAT, said of the international expansion, “This is an enormously important new frontier for STAT. Our surveys have shown that our most loyal readers are clamoring for European coverage. So much news on our core health topics emerges out of Europe.”
Chen completes the new chronic health issues team assembled by STAT editorial director Laura Chang. Besides the cardiovascular beat, STAT now has reporters covering chronic diseases, cancer, addiction, and commercial determinants of health.
“STAT is giving noncommunicable diseases the attention they merit as killers of millions of people each year around the globe,” said Chang, who before STAT was a veteran editor at the New York Times.
Andrew Joseph, who joined STAT before its launch in 2015, will open its first international bureau next year in London to further the outlet’s transformation into a worldwide media company. He has written over 700 stories for STAT, including some reported in Colombia on the Zika outbreak in 2016, and he was a 2021 Pulitzer finalist for his Covid reporting, along with STAT’s Helen Branswell and the late Sharon Begley. In Europe, Joseph will take on a steady mix of news and enterprise and profiles as he reports on biotech- and pharma-related stories.
Elaine Chen comes to STAT from Bloomberg News where, in addition to covering markets, she broke news on the CDC’s lack of Covid breakthrough case data and on efforts by immunocompromised patients to get extra vaccine doses. As STAT’s first cardiovascular reporter, she will cover all aspects of cardiovascular and metabolic disease — conditions so common they can seem inevitable and invisible.
STAT’s newest Washington correspondent, John Wilkerson, joins the team from Inside Health Policy, where he spent over 20 years covering the ins and outs of drug pricing legislation and regulation, the FDA, CMS, and almost everything else in health care policy. Wilkerson’s combination of breadth and deep expertise will enable STAT’s Washington team to tackle more of the ambitious and impactful accountability stories coming out of the Capitol.
Erin Mershon joined STAT in 2017 as a Washington correspondent, and has been an editor for more than four years. In addition to her role as a senior news editor, she will further expand STAT’s D.C. presence and oversee its six-person office as the Washington Bureau Chief. Before joining STAT, Erin covered the politics and policy of health care for CQ Roll Call, Politico, and the National Journal, among other outlets.
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ABOUT STAT:
Founded in 2015, STAT is a national digital media brand that focuses on delivering fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about health, medicine, and the life sciences. STAT takes readers inside academic labs, biotech boardrooms, and political backrooms, casting a critical eye on scientific discoveries, scrutinizing corporate strategies, and chronicling the roiling battles for talent, money, and market share. With an award-winning newsroom, STAT provides indispensable insights and exclusive stories on the technologies, personalities, power brokers, and political forces driving massive changes in the life sciences industry — and a revolution in human health.