The Dallas Morning News won a first-place award from the Online News Association for a series of articles published last year about a largely-ignored national health crisis — tens of thousands of deaths each year due to bleeding from survivable injuries.
“Bleeding Out,” a six-part series, found that an estimated 31,000 Americans bleed to death from such injuries every year, and that the majority of paramedics are not equipped to treat massive blood loss. As a result, many patients die on the way to the hospital or soon after they arrive.
News staff writer Lauren Caruba led the project and worked with photographer Smiley Pool and former News computational journalist Ari Sen. The San Antonio Express News, where Caruba began reporting on the project, shared in the award, given for explanatory journalism from a medium-sized newsroom.
Caruba conducted more than 140 interviews and reviewed nearly 300 medical journal articles, spent dozens of hours alongside emergency medical providers, and collaborated with medical researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to produce the series. A grant Caruba earned from the USC Center for Health Journalism helped to support the work.
Caruba’s work had an impact even before the series was published. After Caruba asked Dallas Fire-Rescue why it didn’t carry blood on emergency vehicles, a practice that’s been standard for years in Austin and San Antonio, the agency announced it would start a pilot program.
The award announcement said Bleeding Out was notable for its “exhaustive and meticulous approach, including the vast number of interviews, significant time spent reporting in the field, patient-centered storytelling and grasp of complex scientific material.”
Bleeding Out also won first-place awards in the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors contest and Best of the West, a journalism competition among Western states. Caruba and Sen were also finalists for the Livingston Award, which recognizes outstanding journalists under the age of 35.