Usha Lee McFarling is a national science correspondent for STAT, covering health disparities and the intersection of race with science and medicine. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, and the San Antonio Light, where she covered killer bees, bat rabies outbreaks, and cases of leprosy linked to armadillo taxidermy. Her work on the diseased state of the world's oceans earned the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism and her coverage of health disparities has earned an Edward R. Murrow award, and awards from the Association of Health Care Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association. In 2024 she was awarded the Victor Cohn prize for excellence in medical science reporting and the Bernard Lo, MD award in bioethics. Usha graduated from Brown University with a degree in biology and later earned a master's degree at UC Berkeley after spending years studying the behavior of desert woodrats.
