Alum and journalist Lara Salahi, who earned a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, co-authors book about the 2014 Ebola crisis in Africa and what should be done to help improve the global response the next time an outbreak occurs.
Lara Salahi is a 2003 graduate of Notre Dame Prep and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.
Salahi shoots, writes, and edits her own stories and currently works as an independent journalist focusing on public health, science and medicine. In 2014, she shared a Pulitzer Prize with the staff of The Boston Globe for its coverage of the bombings in 2013 that killed three people and wounded more than 260 others near the Boston Marathon finish line.
The holder of a dual undergraduate degree from Boston University in broadcast journalism and international relations with a concentration in Middle East and North African foreign policy and security studies, Salahi also is the founder of Salahi Media, a multi-platform media production company based in the Boston area.
While she was working toward a master’s degree in health communication from Emerson College, she was field-producing stories in the New England region for ABC News shows, including Good Morning America and World News with David Muir, and she has previously worked with the ABC News' Medical Unit, where she produced digital and on-air health stories.
This year, in a book due to be released in November, Salahi teamed up with an award-winning genetic researcher, Pardis Sabeti, who helped tame the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, to tell the story of what happened and what would have to change to prevent the next outbreak from spiraling out of control again.
Salahi said the book is a deep look into the broken system of global infectious disease outbreak response.
Written by Salahi and an award-winning genetic researcher, Outbreak Culture examines each phase of the Ebola epidemic — the largest and deadliest of its kind — and identifies the factors that kept key information from reaching physicians, which complicated the government’s response to the crisis.
Salahi, who is fluent in Armenian, Arabic and French, also said the book makes the case that the global community is not prepared for the next international infectious disease epidemic when it hits.
"Science tells us it’s a matter of 'when,' not 'if,'" she said. "In the book, we lay out some guiding principles to hopefully help improve the world's culture of response when the next outbreak hits."
Salahi said her co-author, Sabeti, is the scientist who sequenced the genome of Ebola during the 2014 outbreak.
"We met in 2014 while I was covering the Ebola outbreak," she said. "And from there we collaborated on original research, which turned into this book."
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Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org