Sydney Lupkin
Sydney Lupkin is the pharmaceuticals correspondent for NPR.
She was most recently a correspondent at Kaiser Health News, where she covered drug prices and specialized in data reporting for its enterprise team. She's reported on how tainted drugs can reach consumers, how companies take advantage of rare disease drug rules and how FDA-approved generics often don't make it to market. She's also tracked pharmaceutical dollars to patient advocacy groups and members of Congress. 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 News, VICE News, 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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Journavx is the first truly new painkiller approved by the Food and Drug Administration in more than 20 years. But the drug is expensive, and many people can't get it yet. -
While some compounding pharmacies have stopped making alternatives to Wegovy and Zepbound since shortages were declared over, others are continuing and pushing regulatory boundaries. -
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. -
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. -
Compounding pharmacies have been allowed to essentially make a cheaper version of Eli Lilly's Zepbound, but they have to stop Wednesday. That has left many patients wondering what to do next. -
On its last weekday in power, the Biden Administration has chosen the next batch of drugs up for price negotiation in Medicare. -
The pharmaceutical companies behind Ozempic, Wegovy and other weight-loss meds push to prevent compounding pharmacies from making cheaper copies. They argue they can keep up with demand on their own. -
Omicron has many more mutations than previous variants of concern, a fact that raises questions about how effective existing vaccines will be against the new form of the coronavirus. -
There's a new, heavily mutated COVID-19 variant called omicron. Scientists tell us what's known so far about it, what's not yet known, and what this all means for public health.
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Using the COVID vaccine "off-label" — whether that's for booster shots or young children — may be tempting to some vaccine providers, but the CDC warns it could get them into trouble.
