Award-winning journalism has drawn millions of loyal readers
BOSTON, Sept. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — STAT launched 10 years ago with a mission of filling a journalistic void in coverage of health and medicine. What started then as a small operation based mostly in Boston has grown to a national brand covering scientific hubs across the United States, with a recent expansion into the U.K. and global ambitions beyond. During this time, STAT’s initial lineup of nearly two dozen employees has grown to a staff of roughly 100, with outposts outside of its headquarters in Boston including New York, Washington, D.C., the Midwest, and California.
Becoming STAT
Founded by John and Linda Henry, the owners of The Boston Globe, STAT was meant to test the idea that readers would pay for high quality, in-depth news coverage of the life sciences. Under the leadership of co-founder and executive editor Rick Berke, STAT has proven that this model works, even as many other media companies have struggled and shut down. What sets STAT apart is its deep, authoritative reporting and compelling storytelling. Coverage spans both the accelerating scientific revolution and the myriad shortcomings of the U.S. health care system. We routinely publish tough-minded stories about the most influential voices and institutions in health and medicine — from drugmakers and health providers, to tech giants, scientists, and public health leaders. With these stories reaching an audience of dedicated readers, STAT has always punched above its weight.
“We are proud that our reporting has expanded the public understanding of the worlds of health and medicine, and made a difference,” Berke said. “One of our first achievements was successfully suing Purdue Pharma to release its secret documents on the marketing of OxyContin. We were the first U.S. news organization to seize on the novel coronavirus as a potentially catastrophic global health threat. This year, record numbers of subscribers are drawn to our deep, authoritative reporting of the upheaval we’re seeing in health and medicine.”
Our Impact
Our stories, your stories, changed the landscape of health and medicine
STAT’s reporting has prompted numerous investigations, led to reforms, and has expanded the public understanding of health and medicine at every level. Here are some highlights.
- 2019 – Secret Purdue Pharma files on its marketing of OxyContin unsealed after a nearly four-year legal fight waged by STAT.
- 2020 – STAT was the first U.S. news organization to seize on the novel coronavirus as a potentially catastrophic global health threat, and consistently produced vital, prescient coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic. In March 2020, the New York Times described STAT as “the medical news site that saw the coronavirus coming months ago.”
- 2022 – Based on STAT’s revelations about Biogen executives’ use of a back channel to FDA officials to win approval of the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, a congressional investigation concludes that the approval was “rife with irregularities,” including dozens of undisclosed calls and emails and an inappropriate level of coordination.
- 2023 – Investigation of Epic’s predictive model for sepsis helps inspire first federal disclosure requirements for AI tools embedded in hospital electronic health record systems.
- 2023 – Medicare stepped up audits of insurers’ refusal to cover patient care and issued new guidance on the use of AI tools to deny care, and two class-action lawsuits were filed in response to STAT’s “Denied by AI” series, which revealed that insurers were using a computer algorithm to deny care to older and disabled patients.
- 2024 – STAT’s yearlong “Health Care’s Colossus” investigation, which documented how the conglomerate wields its market power to milk the health care system for profit, helped lead to two ongoing Justice Department investigations and spurred lawmakers’ calls for reforms in the Medicare Advantage program.
Readers are flocking to STAT in record numbers. They tell us they are drawn to our deep, authoritative reporting of the upheaval we’re seeing in health and medicine and the reverberations for each and every one of us. We’ve added 45% more subscribers this summer than the previous summer, and we now have more subscribers than ever in our near 10-year history.
Just in the past year, its newsroom has relentlessly covered the impact of the Trump administration on science and health care, while producing these and other groundbreaking investigative series and narrative projects:
- In STAT’s yearlong “Coercive Care” series, we documented the ways in which doctors have pressured women with sickle cell disease to have tubal ligations they didn’t want or fully understand, as recently as 2022.
- “The War on Recovery” series debunked an entrenched, defeatist narrative: that the American opioid crisis is a tragedy with no solution. The reality is that methadone and buprenorphine are highly effective in treating opioid addiction. STAT unraveled the ways in which virtually every sector of American society is obstructing the use of these medications.
- “Embedded Bias” exposed the consequences of race becoming ubiquitous in medical decision-making tools. We found that race-based algorithms, often invisible to clinicians and certainly to patients, were pervasive, yet the rationale for using race was frequently unexamined or relied on weak evidence; in some cases, it traced back to erroneous slavery-era thinking. These tools have been shown to delay care and worsen health disparities.
The success of all of this world-class journalism can be seen in the two Pulitzer Prize finalists and countless awards that STAT has received over the last 10 years, including the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards, George W. Polk Awards, Gerald Loeb and SABEW awards, and a documentary that was nominated for an Emmy. More so, it can be seen in STAT’s loyal readers who are passionate about our work.
As one, Bill Herrmann, posted on social media recently, “STAT is a one-of-a-kind treasured resource, and these authors are among the best. Keep up the great work — we need it now more than ever!”
STAT’s Past Decade
Looking back, STAT’s unique approach was evident from the start, with early investigations into IBM Watson and its exaggerated claim to revolutionize cancer care, and a nearly four-year legal battle to unseal Purdue Pharma documents shedding light on its role in the opioid crisis. STAT did not back down when such investigations built tension with its advertisers, instead relying increasingly on its subscription product, STAT+, to fuel the business. STAT also launched an opinion franchise, First Opinion, which quickly became a sought-after home for persuasive and personal essays, and would eventually include pieces written by the director-general of the World Health Organization, senators, and former directors of the CDC, among many others.
STAT continued growing by pushing its journalism to new mediums. In 2018, it launched the ever-popular weekly biotech podcast “The Readout LOUD,” featuring STAT’s first-rate biotech reporters. Around the same time, with a growing multimedia department, STAT produced its first documentary, “Runnin’,” about the toll of the opioid epidemic in Somerville, Mass. Later, STAT created a full-length documentary on the future of prosthetic limbs, “Augmented,” which aired on “NOVA” in 2022 and was nominated for a national Emmy Award. Next up was the live stage, as STAT started an events business in 2019 with the goal of bringing its readers together to experience impactful live journalism, while driving revenue. It worked, and STAT’s successful inaugural STAT Summit in November 2019 paved the way for an ambitious slate of events held annually across the country.
After a brief pivot to all-virtual offerings during the pandemic, STAT’s events program has returned with full force to in-person convenings. In addition to the flagship STAT Summit in Boston, STAT now also hosts a one-day Breakthrough Summit East in New York City and Breakthrough Summit West in San Francisco, alongside several other smaller, industry-adjacent convenings. This year’s flagship summit will mark the start of STAT’s 10-year anniversary, focusing on “the next 10 years” in health and medicine.
When Covid hit, STAT’s Helen Branswell was the first U.S.-based reporter to write about the “novel virus” in China in January 2020. While shutdowns brought plans for in-person events to a screeching halt, STAT saw traffic to its site increase nearly tenfold as millions of new readers turned to STAT as a trusted news source throughout the pandemic. During this time, STAT saw months with upward of 23 million unique visitors. Since then, this number has leveled off at closer to 3 million unique monthly visitors, but STAT’s powerhouse newsroom has not slowed down.
STAT continues to embrace creative storytelling tools across many platforms beyond our homepage and app, expanding our audio offerings to include the “First Opinion Podcast,” and building data trackers to keep readers up to date on everything from the 150 weight loss drugs in development to the FDA’s latest breakthrough device designations. In 2023, STAT released a three-part short documentary series about rural health care, and in 2024, a five-part animated explainer series on drug pricing.
STAT champions its community of readers through long-standing programs like STAT Wunderkinds, which recognizes the best and brightest young minds in science each year, and STAT Madness, a bracket-style competition pitting research teams from U.S. universities against each other to find the most groundbreaking biomedical innovation of the year. A newer program, STATUS List, launched in 2022, names the leaders shaping the headlines each year, and brings them together in one room to discuss the future of health and medicine. On top of this, STAT has also built a best-in-class branded content studio, offering sophisticated and custom native advertising solutions for its clients, positioning the business for continued growth in the years ahead.
Contact: Boston Globe Media Communications, 617-851-3396, [email protected]
About STAT:
Founded in 2015, STAT is a digital media company that focuses on delivering fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about the life sciences. STAT takes you 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.
About Boston Globe Media:
Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC is a locally owned, award-winning media company serving Boston and New England for over 153 years. Its cornerstone is The Boston Globe, a 27-time Pulitzer Prize-winning news source and one of the most successful metro news organizations in the United States. The Globe is headquartered in Boston with regional bureaus in Washington, D.C., Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. The Globe has been successfully growing its direct subscriber base, today boasting the highest total number of subscribers the organization has had since 2008. The Globe hosts events that connect community members to its journalism and provides a range of digital and home-delivered advertising solutions that reach more consumers than any other New England media brand. Boston Globe Media’s portfolio includes The Boston Globe, Globe Opinion, Boston.com, STAT, The B-Side, Globe Publishing Services, Globe Events, Studio/B, and Boston magazine.
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