Sam Stroozas

Sam Stroozas reports on how health policy and social systems shape everyday life, with particular attention to access, equity and the people navigating new rules and resources. As a reporter and digital producer at MPR News, she works on the health beat while also helping steer the outlet’s digital coverage of books, race and community stories.

Health policy, regulation and city government

Stroozas’ health coverage often begins in public meetings, where policy is debated and community members testify about how proposed changes will affect them. In her reporting on Minneapolis City Council hearings over an effort to repeal an adult bathhouse ban, she follows the public comment process and the questions around changing a long-standing health regulation, treating the hearing as both a policy story and a community story. She uses this kind of city government coverage to show how health rules are written, challenged and revised in public.

Her work on statewide health policy takes a similar approach. In a story on Minnesota’s decision to provide free menstrual products in schools, Stroozas reports that the policy has not solved the underlying problems of access, making clear that passing a law is only one step toward menstrual equity. She focuses on the gap between an announced health benefit and the day-to-day reality for students, emphasizing implementation details and practical barriers rather than treating the measure as a finished success.

Menstrual products and youth health

Menstrual health is one of the clearest through-lines in Stroozas’ reporting. Her piece on free menstrual products in schools looks at how young people encounter or miss these supplies in the spaces where they spend their days, and what that means for their ability to manage their health with dignity. By centering students’ access issues, she treats menstrual products as basic health infrastructure rather than an add-on, and she shows how design and distribution decisions inside schools can support or undermine that infrastructure.

Across this work she writes about menstruation in straightforward terms, linking it to education, public spending and equity. The focus is less on abstract policy language and more on how a health intervention feels to the people it is meant to serve, which distinguishes her coverage from generic health reporting that might stop at the level of legislative change.

Community voices on race, land and identity

Even when she is not writing directly about clinical care, Stroozas’ digital work often touches on the health of communities through stories about race, land and identity. For MPR News she has contributed to coverage of conversations around race and racial justice, including work highlighting longstanding Black congregations such as St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church. Her storytelling in these pieces connects religious and cultural institutions to community resilience and social wellbeing.

In a feature on Anishinaabe author Ashley Fairbanks’ children’s book inviting readers to honor ancestral Native land, Stroozas presents a story about how teaching land history can shape young people’s sense of belonging and responsibility. She frames the book as a way for non-Native children to remember who came before them on the land they inhabit, linking cultural education to broader questions of care for place and community.

Her video work for MPR News includes a story about “Rock the Rez,” a program empowering Indigenous girls through music, where she serves as the digital producer for coverage that combines visual storytelling with themes of empowerment and self-expression. These pieces expand her health beat into the social and cultural spaces where identity, mental health and community support intersect.

Books, events and digital storytelling across beats

Alongside her health reporting, Stroozas plays a key role in MPR News’ books and literary coverage. For The Thread, the outlet’s books vertical, she regularly rounds up local events and Minnesota book news, connecting readers to author talks, festivals and new releases. She contributes to annual staff lists of the best books read by MPR News employees, underscoring her deep engagement with contemporary literature and local authors. In these projects she moves between curation and reporting, selecting works, summarizing them and highlighting their themes for a broad audience.

Her broader career includes reporting for other local outlets on subjects such as environmental research and climate action, as well as stories about restaurant culture and neighborhood institutions. This earlier work shows her comfort with both hard-news topics like global climate findings and more textured features about food, space and community. At MPR News she also contributes photography, including sports images used to illustrate coverage of professional women’s rugby, which adds a visual dimension to her storytelling.

Across platforms, Stroozas describes herself as a journalist and “all things digital” at MPR News, reflecting a role that spans written stories, video, social content and curation. That hybrid position shapes her health coverage: she reports on policy and access, but she also thinks about how to present those issues in formats that reach people where they are, whether through a detailed article, a short video or a round-up that links health to books, culture and community life.