Joseph Shapiro
Joseph Shapiro is a NPR News Investigations correspondent.
Shapiro's major investigative stories include his reports on the way rising court fines and fees create an unequal system of justice for the poor and the rise of "modern day debtors' prisons," the failure of colleges and universities to punish for on-campus sexual assaults, the epidemic of sexual assault of people with intellectual disabilities, the problems with solitary confinement, the inadequacy of civil rights laws designed to get the elderly and people with disabilities out of nursing homes, and the little-known profits involved in the production of medical products from donated human cadavers.
His "Child Cases" series, reported with PBS Frontline and ProPublica, found two dozen cases in the U.S. and Canada where parents and caregivers were charged with killing children, but the charges were later reversed or dropped. Since that series, a Texas man who was the focus of one story was released from prison. And in California, a woman who was the subject of another story had her sentence commuted.
Shapiro joined NPR in November 2001 and spent eight years covering health, aging, disability, and children's and family issues on the Science Desk. He reported on the health issues of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and helped start NPR's 2005 Impact of War series with reporting from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center. He covered stories from Hurricane Katrina to the debate over overhauling the nation's health care system.
Before coming to NPR, Shapiro spent 19 years at U.S. News & World Report, as a Senior Writer on social policy and served as the magazine's Rome bureau chief, White House correspondent, and congressional reporter.
Among honors for his investigative journalism, Shapiro has received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, George Foster Peabody Award, George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, Sigma Delta Chi, IRE, Dart, Ruderman, and Gracie awards, and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Award.
Shapiro is the author of the award-winning book NO PITY: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (Random House/Three Rivers Press), which is widely read in disability studies classes.
Shapiro studied long-term care and end-of-life issues as a participant in the yearlong 1997 Kaiser Media Fellowship in Health program. In 1990, he explored the changing world of people with disabilities as an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow.
Shapiro attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Carleton College. He's a native of Washington, DC, and lives there now with his family.
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Many of the men and women who returned from Iraq with traumatic brain injuries may never fully recover. As part of our Span of War series, we continue our story of one soldier's attempt to grasp his new limitations and ultimately head home to his wife and family in West Virginia. -
Last year in Iraq, a rocket-propelled grenade tore off most of Marine Corps Sgt. Oscar Canon's thigh, exposing his artery and leg bone. Now, nine months later, he is set to undergo the latest of 33 surgeries to reconstruct his leg. -
Walter Reed Army Medical Center is joining other military facilities in going under the knife. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission has voted 8-0 to close the hospital. Presidents and military personnel have been treated at the center since its opening in 1909.
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When troops get seriously injured in Iraq, multiple surgeries at a military hospital are often required, and it helps if there's usually a family member there. A Marine charity, The Semper Fi Fund, is making it easier for families to stay by the bedside over the long course of recovery.
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Researchers find 4.2 percent of soldiers injured in Iraq develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the first few months. But at the Army's Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the rate is much lower.
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As part of the Span of War Series, NPR's Joseph Shapiro concludes a two-part story on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Herold Noel is a veteran of the war in Iraq, with PTSD. In this segment, Noel talks about the groups that helped him find a place to live and find some purpose in his life.
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For many young men and women, joining the military is a path out of poverty. But those who return to impoverished neighborhoods with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder can find it especially hard to recover. We profile Herold Noel, a veteran of the Iraq war who ended up homeless before getting help. -
In the second of two reports on the reinvention of the nursing home, NPR's Joseph Shapiro visits Tupelo, Miss., to see if the way a nursing home looks can change the way people live. The experiment is based on a concept called the Green House Project.
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Nursing homes are often thought of as grim places. But a new approach is being tested. Instead of an institutional setting, the goal now is to provide a homelike — but safe — atmosphere for residents.
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When scientists study the psychiatric injuries of war, they usually study it in men. But now more women are coming back from Iraq with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Abbie Pickett of the Wisconsin National Guard faces a continuing struggle to get her life back on track.
