Eilís O'Neill
Reporter
About
Eilís is a reporter covering health. She focuses on health inequities, substance use and addiction, infectious diseases, mental health, and reproductive and maternal health.
Eilís came to KUOW in 2016. Before that, she worked as a freelance reporter, first in South America, and then in New York City. Her work has aired on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, APM’s Marketplace, Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, and other programs.
Eilís' work as part of a team covering Covid-19 outbreaks and vaccine hesitation in Washington won a regional Murrow award, as did a series about children who lost parents to Covid-19. Her series about the opioid crisis on the Olympic Peninsula won several regional Society for Professional Journalists awards as well as a national Public Media Journalists Association award.
Eilís grew up in Seattle and was a high school intern at KUOW, in the program that later became RadioActive. She has a Master's in Science, Health, and Environment Reporting from Columbia University. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two children.
Location: Seattle
Languages: English, Spanish
Pronouns: she/her
Stories
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Many things got Amanda Schroeder into addiction. Her kids got her out
Last February, Amanda Schroeder landed in jail for breaking into a car to keep warm.
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Numbing the pain: Opioid crisis on the Olympic Peninsula
Vicki Lowe, a Sequim City Councilmember and citizen of the Jamestown Tribe, was taking notes on intergenerational trauma at a conference when it hit her.
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UW Medicine is going to start billing for some electronic messages from patients
Ones that require medical expertise, and more than five minutes of their time.
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Some Seattle doctors are ditching the scale. They say focusing on weight drives misdiagnoses
Doctors have long emphasized their patients' weight and blamed the health problems of anyone with a larger body on the number on the scale. Now, some Seattle-area providers are trying a new approach: throwing out the scale, and never recommending intentional weight loss.
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WA’s new budget includes money for a unique vending machine
Ones that sell emergency contraception and pregnancy tests at public colleges and universities.
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Investigation continues into Virginia Mason bacterial outbreak, link to patient deaths unclear
A bacterial outbreak at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle has sickened 31 patients since October. Seven of them have since died, but it’s unknown what caused those deaths — the infection or the diagnoses that brought them to the hospital in the first place.
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4 Virginia Mason patients dead amid bacterial outbreak. It's not clear that's what killed them
Over the past six months, 27 patients hospitalized at Virginia Mason Medical Center in downtown Seattle were infected with a bacteria that can cause pneumonia, meningitis, and wound or bloodstream infections. Four of those patients have since died.
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Washington state lawmakers pass protections for gender-affirming care
Washington state lawmakers approved a bill Wednesday that protects teen runaways seeking gender-affirming or reproductive health care. The bill is now headed to Gov. Jay Inslee's desk for a signature to make it official.
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King County has no walk-in mental health crisis centers. This levy aims to change that
Ballots are in the mail for a county levy that aims to change these circumstances by funding five behavioral health crisis centers, including one for children.
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Native, Black doulas say culturally specific birth care could help reduce high maternal death rates
In Washington state and nationwide, Black and Native American mothers and their babies are more likely to die during or after pregnancy than white moms and their babies. And the rates are getting worse. Now, some birth workers in the Seattle area are trying to turn things around with help from some new government funding.