_CPI, MOTHER JONES

Health workers see Vibrio as a rare danger, if they’ve heard of it at all. But it’s already causing more cases of flesh-eating disease. And it’s poised to get worse.

Infections by Vibrio, a lethal bacteria, have been rising steadily in the U.S. The microorganism, found in brackish and balmy coastal waters, thrives as climate change warms the oceans and intensifies hurricanes and storms. Cases have doubled nationally over the last decade, but health departments fail to recognize the threat.

That is the story that colleagues from Columbia Journalism Investigations (Ali Raj and Veronica Penney, with the collaboration of Elisabeth Gawthrop and Dean Russell) and I have put together, under the leadership of editor Kristen Lombardi, and in partnership with Sammy Fretwell at the McClatchy papers.

It is a result of outstanding shoe-leather reporting from my colleagues and hours of work filing FOIA requests and making sense of dozens of spreadsheets with national and state-level data on Vibrio infections. The complete story is published by The Center For Public Integrity (CPI) and Mother Jones. We also have fantastic local stories, focusing on the disease’s rise in North and South Carolina, led by Fretwell on The State, The Herald, and The Charlotte Observer. Dan Barkin, who edited the local version, also writes to The News & Observer about the “behind the scenes” of our reporting.