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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The Food and Drug Administration priority review voucher comes from a Canadian company that got it by developing a drug for leishmaniasis, a disease long neglected by pharmaceutical companies. -
Merck's Vytorin reduced the risk of heart attack and stroke more than a cholesterol-lowering statin alone. The findings come from an international study of more than 18,000 people in 39 countries. -
To qualify for coverage, patients would have to first meet with a doctor to talk through the pros and cons of scans, which involve a low-dose of radiation.
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Computerized prescription orders are one real advantage. Clicking checkboxes on screen after screen not so much. -
An NPR poll finds a majority of Americans are worried about Ebola. Fifty-six percent of people are either "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about the spread of the Ebola virus to the U.S. -
Researchers call for stronger safety warnings on drugs called dopamine agonists because they can trigger self-destructive, obsessional behavior in some people.
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More than half of Americans polled said they were concerned about an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. within a year. When asked the same question in August, 39 percent of people expressed the same concern. -
Contrave will be available in pharmacies this fall. But the companies working on the drug's marketing won't say how much it will cost. -
The Drug Enforcement Administration is loosening up its rules so that people will have more ways of disposing of drugs that can be risky to keep around after they're no longer needed. -
The vaccine would target the Zaire species of Ebola that's now spreading through West Africa. The vaccine worked well in tests on macaque monkeys, and it could be tested in humans starting in 2015.
