AUSTIN, Texas — Every year, the Texas Medical Association (TMA) awards journalists across the Lone Star State for their excellence and outstanding job reporting about health issues.
This year, KVUE Defenders reporter Jenni Lee and photojournalist Dennis Thomas took home a win for their outstanding work on their story about an Austin teen's overdose and her road to recovery.
The TMA Anson Jones Award was named after a Texas physician who "served the Republic of Texas with distinction as a member of Congress, secretary of state and its last president from 1844 to 1846."
Jones established the first regulations concerning the practice of medicine in Texas, urged the formation of an Association of Physicians of the Republic of Texas and wrote the book "Republic of Texas."
Jones's accomplishments led the TMA to award him for excellence in journalism. After that, Blair Justice was awarded the first TMA Anson Jones, MD Award for "outstanding lay medical reporting" on May 1, 1957.
Since then, several other reporters have been awarded for their excellence in medical reporting.
You can watch Lee's full award-winning story below:
Former KVUE reporters and photojournalists have also won this award in previous years. Reporter Molly Oak and photojournalists Jackson Grimm and Tom Rapp won an Anson Jones Award in 2022; Lee and photojournalist Heikki Mustonen received an honorable mention in 2021; and reporter Christy Millweard and photojournalist Konner Barrick won in 2019.