EP 94: Designing for Disaster | Sheri Fink

Design Lab with Bon Ku

How might we better prepare for disasters?

What role did deadly design play in Hurricane Katrina?

How does the concept of triage during a crisis reflect our values?

Sheri Fink is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated television producer and the author of the New York Times bestselling nonfiction book Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital about choices made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is a producer of the Five Days at Memorial limited series on Apple TV+.

Fink’s work has often explored the impact of crises on health care and is informed by her background as an MD and former relief worker in disaster and conflict zones (she also holds a PhD in neuroscience).

Five Days at Memorial, the recipient of eight book awards, was based on an article investigating patient deaths at Memorial Medical Center. Co-published by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine, the article won both a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award.

As a news reporter, Fink extensively covered the Covid pandemic and, earlier, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, sharing Pulitzer Prizes in 2021 and 2015 with New York Times colleagues. Fink’s investigation into how the Ebola epidemic began in Sierra Leone and why it wasn’t stopped in time for the PBS Frontline episode Outbreak received an Emmy nomination for outstanding research in 2016.

Fink often lectures on topics ranging from emergency preparedness to journalism and is an adjunct associate professor at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She is at work on a book about the global Covid pandemic.

Episode Links and Mentions:

http://www.sherifink.net/

Article on the book via NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/books/five-days-at-memorial-by-sheri-fink.html

Article about the new show via Entertainment Weekly: https://ew.com/tv/tv-reviews/five-days-at-memorial-review-apple-tv-plus/

Follow Sheri: Twitter | Facebook | Insta

Episode Website/Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/designlabpod/sherifink

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Production by Robert Pugliese

Edit by Fernando Queiroz

Cover Design by Eden Lew

Theme song by Emmanuel Houston

Indexed in the Library of Congress: ISSN 2833-2032