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When we heard the initial reports of a cholera outbreak in the heart of Haiti, I dropped an assignment about a school opening and raced to a busy port city near the country’s longest river.
Saint-Marc was said to be the area hardest hit by the waterborne disease and that proved to be true. The main hospital, Saint Nicolas, was overrun with IV-tethered patients, from the corridors to the courtyard, as men showed up with sick family members on large beds that they had somehow liberated from their modest homes. The car radio crackled with stories of people collapsing in the street.
I had written about public health issues before, like child malnutrition in the Guatemalan countryside and illness linked to an incinerator ash in a historic Fort Lauderdale, Florida, neighborhood. But the cholera outbreak in Haiti was profoundly different: Imagine if a stranger came to town, ostensibly with good intentions, dumped his contaminated waste in a central waterway, and then thousands died and more fell sick. It would seem almost inevitable that the authorities would want to hold that individual liable for wrongdoing, but that really wasn’t the case in Haiti.
By all accounts, a United Nations peacekeeping mission from Nepal was found to have introduced cholera to Haiti in October 2010 by dumping its untreated fecal waste into the country’s main river. This was several months after the massive earthquake pummeled the Port-au-Prince capital, and humanitarian workers had already hailed the absence of disease.
The largest cholera epidemic in modern times followed. Officials say more than 10,000 people died, but the death toll is likely higher because of limited record keeping. Lawyers for the victims and family members unsuccessfully sued the U.N. in the U.S. court system. Due to mounting public pressure, in 2016, then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a public apology. In a memoir, he later described the lawsuit as a “fraudulent” extortion attempt. It could have undercut U.N. work everywhere had it prevailed, he wrote.
The Haiti cholera story made stark the political nature of health: Some lives are deemed worthy of being healthy, others less so. At every turn, I had tried to hold officials accountable, from the U.N. to Haiti’s health ministry, and it is this kind of accountability reporting that has informed my work over the years, from my early days as a beat reporter at The Miami Herald to, more recently, as a member of the AP global investigations team using public records to break news and bolster the news cooperative’s coverage. I want to bring this same commitment to holding officials accountable to my new role at Healthbeat.
The job comes at a time like no other for New York. Voters last month overwhelmingly rejected the political status quo as they elected Zohran Mamdani, a candidate from outside the Democratic establishment who aims to make one of the most expensive cities in the world more affordable for its residents. It’s a goal that sounds as pedestrian as it does profound. It will be interesting to see how the 34-year-old political newcomer delivers on his campaign promises following his Jan. 1 inauguration. He might be mayor of the largest (and arguably most dynamic!) city in the United States but he is unlikely to escape scrutiny as the country follows him, with a mix of cheer, curiosity and, for some, contempt.
With the support of his yet-to-be named commissioner, Mamdani will oversee the largest and oldest health department in the United States. His work will be cut out for him. His health care plan as presented during the campaign was noticeably thin, leaving some to wonder what he might have in store for a critical expense that is making life for many of us a little more unaffordable.
Because he has said so little, a preview of his health vision might be found in the composition of his transition committee, which is staffed with a mix of hospital executives, public and private university academics, union leaders, former health commissioners, and LGTBQ+ advocates. To be certain, parts of his campaign agenda overlapped with public health issues. A community safety initiative, for example, seeks to help New Yorkers experiencing mental health episodes by sending medical professionals, rather than just police officers with scant training, to the scene.
New York City’s health sector is poised to experience significant changes, ones that are bound to reshape the health and wellbeing of residents in all five boroughs. President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes major revisions to Medicaid financing and the Affordable Care Act. The New York state Department of Health estimates these changes could cause 1.5 million people to lose Medicaid coverage, and ACA recipients could see a spike next year in their deductibles and premiums. As such, New York hospitals and other health care providers will experience an increase in uncompensated costs, and a borough like the Bronx, whose economy is heavily reliant on hospitals, will bear further brunt.
I look forward to writing about a broad range of public health issues, from, of course, the Mamdani administration’s policies to the federal government’s Make America Healthy Again mandate. Other areas of keen interest include Greater New York’s efforts to keep pathogens at bay next summer when more than a million visitors are expected to show up to watch the 2026 World Cup, as well as plans to make the city’s aging infrastructure more climate resilient. We all know that, when a storm parks itself above New York, even for a few hours, we see flooding that looks like the end times on IG reels and brings the city to its knees.
That said, I’m seeking public health stories that are unique to New York; I’m also seeking unique public health stories that happen to be set in New York. These could be about, say, scientists in Queens doing ground-breaking work and/or research that raises broader questions about health, science, and climate. Above all, I want my reporting to do two things: Hold health officials accountable, be they from the White House or City Hall, and be interesting and illuminating.
I’d love to know more about the issues that concern Healthbeat readers and warrant deeper coverage during this pivotal time. What would you like to know more about? How are these new policies playing out in your communities and affecting you, your family, and friends? What’s working? What needs improvement?
If you happen to have any documents or emails you think I should see, please send them.
You can reach me at tdaniel@healthbeat.org or on the messaging app Signal at trentondaniel.88.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Trenton
