LAURA UNGAR

March 12, 2015 – Laura Ungar moderated an event featuring special guest, Dr. Sander Florman who shared the fascinating story of his journey from growing up in Louisville to rebuilding the transplant program in New Orleans post-Katrina to leading one of the most prominent transplant institutes in the world.

 Laura Ungar is National/Regional Health Enterprise Reporter for USA Today, The Courier-Journal and Gannett. The University of Connecticut graduate has been a reporter since 1990, and began her current position in July 2014, after working as medical writer at The Courier-Journal for a decade. Previously, she covered health, education and features at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., and a series of towns and cities at The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. She has won more than 30 national, regional and local awards and fellowships for her work from organizations such as Gannett Co. Inc., the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists and the International Center for Journalists. Major recent works include, among others, stories on the impact of high insurance deductibles on the middle class, the vulnerability of the nation’s rural hospitals, a several-year-long series of stories on drug abuse in Kentucky, a project on cervical cancer in India and a series of stories on a Louisville breast cancer patient whose dying wish is to and share her belief that beauty is not erased by illness.

Ungar speaks to journalism classes in Kentucky, Indiana and India, and teaches a University of Kentucky class pairing local students and Indian students for joint story projects. She lives in Louisville with her husband and two children.