Author

Helen Santoro is a science journalist who writes about the brain, health disparities and the LGBTQ+ community. Specifically, my passion lies in deep-dive and investigative pieces about health care discrimination against transgender and queer people. My work has appeared in the Associated Press, High Country News, Kaiser Health News, Knowable Magazine, Nature Magazine, The New York Times, Science Magazine, Scientific American, Slate, Smithsonian Magazine, WIRED and more. I’ve covered stories about my missing left temporal lobe and how the neural networks critical for language managed to rewire themselves and how Medicaid and insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act often don’t cover the basics, including injectable estrogen, needed by many trans Americans.