Speaker's Profile

Stephanie Innes covers health with a focus on patient safety, hospital quality, consumer experiences and health policy. She led The Arizona Republic's coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and along with colleague Alison Steinbach, won the 2022 Best of the West journalism contest's news writing division for a story about a deadly outbreak involving 24 people at a country-western dance in the White Mountains. She was named the Arizona Press Club's Virg Hill Journalist of the Year in 2018, the Arizona Newspaper Association's Journalist of the Year in 2016, and won a national Sigma Delta Chi award in 2016 for a series of articles about a Tucson family with familial Alzheimer's disease. She previously covered health for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson. While there, she was part of the team that wrote award-winning stories about the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Giffords' difficult recovery from a devastating injury, and gaps in a mental health system that allowed her shooter to go untreated. Stephanie is a native of Toronto, Canada. When she's not reporting, she is usually reading, riding her bike or hiking in the mountains. She lives in Phoenix and is a proud member of the Association of Health Care Journalists.