Hannah Recht

Counting Peak Bloom

The beauty of D.C.’s cherry blossoms isn’t in the festival, the parade or the hordes of tourists who descend upon the National Mall. I mapped cherry blossom trees across the District to count how many are near any address. Click on your home to find how many you can reach in a half mile radius, or about a ten minute walk.

I built this project with 100% open-source software including MapLibre, Turf, Protomaps, and D.C.’s address API.

★ Honorable mention in the 2024 Pudding Cup.

Tracking Census Dataset Changes

The Census Bureau doesn’t maintain a public changelog or regularly share updates about changes to their sprawling API universe. As a longtime Census data user and package developer I’ve found it nearly impossible to know when data is added or removed. This project publicly catalogs the changes.

The tracker code is written in R, using my censusapi package to grab dataset info, and runs on a schedule using Github Actions. Major updates are automatically posted on Bluesky. The dashboard is built with Svelte.

The Powerful Constraints on Medical Care in Catholic Hospitals Across America

I compiled detailed birth data from every state and tracked the affiliation of every hospital in the U.S. to find that 16% of births are in Catholic hospitals, which restrict reproductive and contraceptive care. My spatial analysis revealed that three out of four Americans live within an hour's drive of Catholic birthing hospitals.

Our investigation found that many don’t have a choice for their care — non-Catholic hospitals are too far to reach in an emergency or aren’t in their insurance networks. Ambulances may take patients to a Catholic facility without giving them a say. Women often don’t know that hospitals are affiliated with the Catholic Church or that they restrict reproductive care.

★ Second place in the 2025 National Headliner Awards, online beat reporting health and science. Finalist for the 2025 NIHCM Award, data-driven storytelling.

Which States Mandate Fluoride in Drinking Water

RFK Jr. wants fluoride out of water but about a dozen states require it. I dug in to how the incoming Trump administration could defluoridate drinking water even though most water treatment decisions are left to local agencies. I gathered and analyzed data from the CDC, mapped fluoridation rates, and examined state laws.

2024 Election Coverage

I covered the 2024 U.S. elections with The Washington Post graphics team.

• The districts that will determine majority control of the House
• The 9 races and 3 long shots that could determine Senate control
• More than 84 million Americans cast a ballot before Election Day

Underfunded and Under Threat

This year-long collaboration between KFF Health News and The Associated Press examined how the U.S. public health front lines have been left understaffed and ill-prepared to save us from the coronavirus pandemic.

As the project’s data reporter, I set up a Google sheets system to organize public records requests and reporter-collected information on public health leaders who had exited. I analyzed data from scanned PDFs, government reports, and research organizations. We published the underlying data on Data.World and Github and helped local reporters adapt our findings through webinars and direct guidance.

• Hollowed-Out Public Health System Faces More Cuts Amid Virus
• Politics Slows Flow of US Pandemic Relief Funds to Public Health Agencies
• Florida’s Cautionary Tale: How Gutting and Muzzling Public Health Fueled COVID Fire
• Public Health Experts Worry About Boom-Bust Cycle of Support

★ Winner of the 2021 Online Journalism Awards University of Florida Award for Investigative Data Journalism and the 2020 AAAS Kavli award, science reporting. Finalist for the 2021 NIHCM Award, general circulation and 2020 SABEW Award, government.

As Medicaid Purge Begins, ‘Staggering Numbers’ of Americans Lose Coverage

In the early days of the Medicaid “unwinding”, I requested data from every state that had begun to roll back pandemic-era Medicaid eligbility protections. My analysis found that the overwhelming majority of people who had lost coverage so far were dropped because of technicalities, not because officials determined they are no longer eligible.

I published all of the underlying records for reuse by local reporters and researchers.

Covid Vaccination Disparities

We published one of the first national analyses revealing deep racial disparities in the covid vaccine rollout.

I gathered vaccination data from state records requests and public dashboards and compared it to Census population data. We later published exclusive federal data on vaccinations by race and ethnicity for every state and analyzed vaccination rates for children.

• Black Americans Are Getting Vaccinated at Lower Rates Than White Americans
• As Vaccine Rollout Expands, Black Americans Still Left Behind
• Stark Racial Disparities Persist in Vaccinations, State-Level CDC Data Shows
• As Omicron Surges, Effort to Vaccinate Young Children Stalls

★ Finalist for the 2022 NIHCM Award, general circulation.

Inaccessible Health Care

Our investigation found covid vaccine registration and information websites at the federal, state and local levels were flouting disability rights laws and limiting the ability of people who are blind or visually impaired to sign up for shots.

Five New York state and local government agencies agreed to fix covid-19 vaccine websites to make them accessible for blind users following a Department of Justice investigation spurred by our initial story.

• Covid Vaccine Websites Violate Disability Laws, Create Inequity for the Blind
• NY Reaches Agreement With DOJ Over Vaccine Access for Blind People
• The Disability Tax: Medical Bills Remain Inaccessible for Many Blind Americans

★ Winner of the 2023 Great Plains Journalism Award for general news, single story.

How the Test-to-Treat Pillar of the US Covid Strategy Is Failing Patients

I investigated the federal covid test-to-treat program and scraped its convoluted dashboard to find that it was dominated by CVS. That company made it difficult, if not impossible, for patients to actually get treatment. I also found that many parts of the country had no test-to-treat options at all.

Within two weeks of this article’s publication, CVS updated their policies and website to fix the issues that I uncovered, newly allowing patients with covid to book in-person treatment appointments.

In Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, Millions Face Long Drives to Stroke Care

In several Mississippi Delta and Appalachian states, more than half of residents must drive longer than 45 minutes to reach a hospital that is stroke-certified and able to provide the most advanced care.

I analyzed drive times to stroke-certified hospitals using R and published the code behind this analysis on Github.

What Life Would Look Like Without the ‘Tampon Tax’

“Band-aids—check. Condoms—check. Sunscreen—check. Tampons? Nope, sorry.”

I explored how the omission of menstrual products from the U.S.’s list of medical products eligible for tax breaks disproportionately affected low-income women and girls. I shopped for medical products and collaborated with a photographer to literally show how the cost of taxes piles up.

★ Winner of the 2019 Malofiej Award for best digital graphic, equality and women’s promotion.

Orphan Black: Clone Tracker

Orphan Black was a science fiction show about clones starring Tatiana Maslany opposite herself in several lead roles. Some reviewers claimed she must be in every minute of the show. I had to investigate.

I watched every episode with a timer in hand to track the screen time of every clone. In the end, there were 50 episodes and 2,062 minutes of Orphan Black, featuring 1,982 minutes of Maslany.

Here’s How Affordable Care Act Marketplaces Are Shaping Up Under Trump’s Watch

As Republicans attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, health insurance companies began to retreat from the ACA marketplaces.

In this blog-style project, I tracked the proposed 2018 ACA marketplace offerings of every company in every county for several months by analyzing arcane insurance rate filings.

#MeToo’s First Year Ends With More Than 425 Accused

We assembled a database of hundreds of people publicly accused of sexual misconduct in the first year after accusations against Harvey Weinstein became public.

For the page header, I created a dizzying animation of the year’s worth of headlines to reflect the quickly growing #MeToo movement. I visualized the coverage by time, industry, and state.

The Massive Prize Luring Miners to the Stars

Asteroids hold potential riches — if miners can reach them. I created illustrations of the first U.S. spacecraft set to bring an asteroid sample back to Earth and analyzed the estimated quintillions of dollars hidden in some distant asteroids.