Bryant Furlow

Bryant Furlow is an investigative journalist who covers public health, medical and environmental accountability issues, using data-driven reporting to show how institutions fail people with the least power. His work for New Mexico In Depth and national outlets tracks the consequences of those failures in hospitals, schools, long-term care facilities and local infrastructure, often prompting official investigations and policy changes. He writes in-depth, document-heavy stories that translate complex systems into clear evidence of harm.

Public health and medical accountability

Furlow focuses much of his reporting on how health systems treat patients and communities, with an emphasis on medical accountability. His investigations have examined lax state regulation of the health insurance industry and the impact of those gaps on patients’ access to care. He has reported on drinking water quality, tying contamination risks and regulatory failures to broader questions of public health oversight.

His work on rural ambulance response times has shown how budget cuts and uneven emergency medical services infrastructure translate into slower help for people in crisis.

He has extensively covered hospital practices, including racial profiling of Native Americans at a maternity hospital and disparities in newborn death rates at major maternity centers.

Furlow reported on a secret hospital policy that violated Native mothers’ patient rights and separated some from their newborns, and his coverage helped spark a federal investigation and end the practice. He also tracks extremely preterm newborn mortality at prominent women’s hospitals, connecting data on outcomes to decisions made by hospital leadership.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he produced award-winning reporting on responses at nursing homes and exposed a Veterans Affairs no-masks policy and telework ban that left workers and residents vulnerable. Within days of his first story, the VA reversed those policies, underscoring the practical impact of his work.

In parallel with his local investigations, Furlow is a frequent contributor and U.S. correspondent to The Lancet’s medical journal news desks, where he covers health and medical stories for an international audience. Across these assignments he relies on records requests, datasets and clinical evidence to challenge official narratives about safety and care.

Racial disparities and school discipline

Furlow has led a multi-year line of reporting on racial disparities in school discipline, centered on Native American and Hispanic students. As part of a ProPublica collaboration with New Mexico In Depth, he documented how Gallup-McKinley County Schools enroll a large share of Indigenous students yet account for most expulsions of Native children in New Mexico.

His analysis of state discipline records showed that these students are removed from classrooms far more often, and for longer periods, than white students for similar infractions.

That work has generated official scrutiny. After his and his colleagues’ reporting, the state attorney general opened an investigation into Gallup-McKinley County Schools and later issued a report finding “substantial racial disparities” in the district’s discipline practices. Furlow’s coverage has followed this process, chronicling the launch of the investigation, the attorney general’s civil rights priorities, and calls for reforms at the district and state levels. He also reports on solutions, writing about schools that pursue restorative justice to keep students in classrooms instead of relying on suspensions and expulsions.

More recently, he has covered a Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission report that echoes his earlier findings and describes pervasive discrimination and fear among Navajo students in the same district. His stories connect testimony from families and community members to the structural failures in state oversight, showing how weak data reporting and enforcement allow inequitable discipline to persist. This education work fits into his broader pattern of civil rights reporting, where he uses detailed data analysis to reveal patterns of unequal treatment in public institutions.

Nursing homes, assisted living and elder care

Furlow regularly covers the conditions in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, focusing on how policy and staffing decisions affect older residents. His reporting has described assisted living facilities becoming “the new nursing homes” and highlighted how oversight of these settings falls short of what vulnerable residents need.

He has written about chronic understaffing in New Mexico nursing homes, detailing how shortages shape care quality and safety for both residents and workers.

During the pandemic, he tracked COVID-19 responses in long-term care facilities, documenting gaps in infection control and accountability. He situates these stories within larger systems, such as state regulation, funding levels and enforcement mechanisms, so that readers can see how everyday neglect connects back to policy choices.

Across his elder-care coverage, Furlow keeps the focus on those most exposed to harm - residents with limited mobility, families with few alternatives and staff working in strained conditions.

Environmental and infrastructure hazards

While his core identity is as a public health and medical reporter, Furlow’s investigations often intersect with environmental and infrastructure risks. He has reported on drinking water quality, linking contamination and weak regulatory oversight to the health of communities. His work has also examined a refinery company’s history of safety violations culminating in a deadly, preventable explosion, connecting industrial safety records to the consequences for workers and nearby residents.

Furlow covers the limits of New Mexico’s highly centralized and understaffed public health system, explaining how the absence of county health boards and underfunded community health planning councils leaves gaps in local responses to issues like vaccination and environmental health threats. He has tracked the off-label sedation of jail inmates with prescription psychiatric drug cocktails, a practice that contributed to a regional street trade, overdoses and deaths, and he ties that story to questions of oversight and ethics in both health care and criminal justice.

These investigations show how he approaches environmental and infrastructure stories through a health lens, using data and records to map the pathways from policy decisions and industrial practices to individual harm.