Our Team

Jim Morris is the founder of Public Health Watch and has been a journalist since 1978, focusing on public health and the environment. He is the author of “The Cancer Factory,” an investigative book on chemical exposures in the workplace published by Beacon Press in 2024. He has received more than 85 awards for his work, including the Barlett and Steele Gold Award, the George Polk award, the Sidney Hillman award, three National Association of Science Writers awards, three national Edward R. Murrow awards and five Texas Headliners awards. Morris spent more than 13 years with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization in Washington, D.C., as a senior reporter, managing editor, acting CEO and executive editor. While there, he directed a global investigation of the asbestos industry that won the John B. Oakes award for environmental reporting from Columbia University and an IRE Medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors in 2011. In 2013, Morris and two colleagues received the Edgar A. Poe award for national reporting from the White House Correspondents’ Association for “Hard Labor,” a series on health and safety threats to American workers. Morris helped edit “Breathless and Burdened,” a 2013 investigation into the flawed federal black lung benefits program that won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He conceived, and was a lead writer on, the 2014 series “Big Oil, Bad Air,” a collaboration with Inside Climate News and The Weather Channel that garnered 10 national awards for its revelations about toxic air emissions from hydraulic fracturing. Morris has worked for newspapers in Texas and California as well as publications such as U.S. News & World Report and Congressional Quarterly in Washington. He can be reached at jmorris@publichealthwatch.org.

He assists Public Health Watch in content and operations, including editing, fundraising, web display and general consulting. He was executive editor of the award-winning investigative news organization Oklahoma Watch from 2012 to 2020, leading its dramatic growth in audience, funding and impact. Previously, he was an editor and reporter at The Arizona Republic for two decades, serving as an enterprise, business, metro and national editor; a general-assignment reporter at the Dallas Times Herald, and an editor and writer at Oklahoma Monthly magazine. He spent a year in Ecuador on a Rotary Journalism Fellowship.

Susan White, Public Health Watch’s project editor, has edited Pulitzer Prize-winning projects at ProPublica, InsideClimate News and the San Diego Union-Tribune. She has also edited three investigative narrative podcasts, including Room 20 for the LA Times, which debuted at number one on iTunes and stayed in the top 10 for weeks. Most recently she shaped and edited Public Health Watch’s first podcast, Fumed, about two stubborn Texans trying to salvage what’s left of their working-class community outside Houston, where the petrochemical industry calls the shots and pushing back can be dangerous.

David Leffler is an Austin-based editor and senior staff writer for Public Health Watch, where he covers chemical pollution and other environmental health issues. His work has produced several award-winning enterprise investigations that have sparked regulatory action and changed environmental law in Texas. David is also the writer and host of Fumed, Public Health Watch’s investigative podcast series about environmental justice and government accountability. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Business Insider, and Grist.

Salina Arredondo is a Portland-based contributing writer and audio producer for Public Health Watch. She was the Senior Producer of Fumed, Public Health Watch’s debut podcast featured statewide by Texas Public Radio and selected by NPR for its New & Noteworthy category. She has won top honors from the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the National Press Foundation and the Association of Health Care Journalists as part of Public Health Watch’s environment team, whose reporting prompted a new bill in the Texas legislature last year aimed at curbing benzene pollution in Channelview, TX. Her work has been published by outlets including KVPR and Business Insider. She earned her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

Kathryn Jones is a longtime journalist and editor with experience in magazines, newspapers, online sites and books.  She has been a writer-at-large and contributing editor at Texas Monthly magazine; a writer-under-contract for The New York Times; a staff writer at The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald; and a freelance writer for the Texas Observer and Texas Highways. She has received the Nancy Monson Freedom of Information Award from the Texas Press Association and Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas for promoting open government. Her essays and poetry have been published in numerous anthologies. Jones also is the author of two poetry collections and a forthcoming film-related biography.  She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.

Shelby Jouppi is a public health data reporter, currently covering pollution and environmental enforcement for Public Health Watch as the FencelineData fellow. She has worked with local newsrooms like Planet Detroit to analyze environmental data, create compelling visualizations and develop public tools like the Michigan Air Violation Tracker. Prior to completing her master’s in data journalism at Columbia University, she was a freelance graphic designer, a podcast producer and a multimedia journalist at WDET Detroit Public Radio.

Kim Krisberg is an award-winning, Austin-based journalist with more than 20 years of experience reporting on public health policy, science and practice. She’s a staff writer at Public Health Watch and leads its reporting project on America’s uninsured. Her work has appeared in The Texas Tribune, Texas Observer, NPR, Houston Public Media, The Washington Blade and The Pump Handle. She was also a decades-long contributor to The Nation’s Health newspaper at the American Public Health Association.

Andrew Morris oversees social media and conducts research for Public Health Watch. Based in Austin, he previously worked in television and film production and as a communications fellow at the Center for Health, Environment and Justice.

Raquel Torres is a bilingual reporter covering Health Equity in the Rio Grande Valley and Medicaid Expansion, Maternal Health Deserts and Mental Health in East Texas. Before joining the Public Health Watch in May 2025, her work investigating systemic inequities in the search for missing persons of color in San Antonio was selected as one of three finalists for the Michael Brick Storytelling Award, and earned honorable mention for the 2025 Star Investigative Report of the Year. She’s passionate about Spanish news access, and has been featured in the Texas Tribune, Latino Rebels and the Longview News-Journal.

Daisy Yuhas is an award-winning science journalist and editor based in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in outlets including Scientific American, The New York Times, The Hechinger Report, The Texas Tribune, The Transmitter and Audubon magazine. In 2023, she co-produced an Emmy-nominated news feature with Univision about the burden of Alzheimer’s disease in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, part of a reporting project led by Public Health Watch.