Sydney Lupkin
Sydney Lupkin is the pharmaceuticals correspondent for NPR.
She was most recently a correspondent at Kaiser Health °µºÚ±¬ÁÏ, where she covered drug prices and specialized in data reporting for its enterprise team. She's reported on how , how and . She's also tracked pharmaceutical dollars to and . Her work has won the National Press Club's Joan M. Friedenberg Online Journalism Award, the National Institute for Health Care Management's Digital Media Award and a health reporting award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing.
Lupkin graduated from Boston University. She's also worked for ABC °µºÚ±¬ÁÏ, VICE °µºÚ±¬ÁÏ, MedPage Today and The Bay Citizen. Her internship and part-time work includes stints at ProPublica, The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, The New England Center for Investigative Reporting and WCVB.
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House Rep. Gerry Connolly is pushing CDC leadership to explain why the personnel who handle FOIA requests lost their jobs, noting that that the public has a right to access federal records.
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The drug company Eli Lilly is suing four telehealth companies for allegedly selling copies made by compounding pharmacies of its drug Zepbound.
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While Food and Drug Administration inspectors who make sure food and drugs meet quality standards were spared in recent cuts, key support staffers were dismissed.
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The action is intended to build upon the existing program for Medicare drug price negotiations, which was created by the Inflation Reduction Act that passed during the Biden administration.
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It was a chaotic week for the nation's health agencies, as layoff notices rolled in along with an order for deep cuts to contract spending. NPR's health reporters tell us what they've learned.
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Health agency staffers describe a week of widespread uncertainty about who still has a job and how the work will get done as thousands of "reduction in force" notices went out beginning April 1. To many it's the opposite of "government efficiency."
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Federal health agencies have to slash their spending on contracts by more than a third, on top of the 10,000-person staffing cuts which started this week.
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Despite promises for "radical transparency," Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid off many staff on teams that fulfill public records requests at health agencies.
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Staffers began receiving termination notices this morning as part of a major restructuring at HHS. Some senior leadership are on their way out too.
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With no help from the federal government, states are trying to regulate recreational marijuana. California's Department of Cannabis Control works to keep contaminants out of joints, vapes and edibles.