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Moms and Babies at Risk: how we conducted our investigation

KVPR | By Kerry Klein

Published September 16, 2022 at 4:00 AM PDT

Tracy Dominguez created a memorial to her daughter Demi Dominguez and grandson Malakhi De Leon in the living room of her Bakersfield room. Both died in April 2019.

Kerry Klein’s reporting on infant and maternal mortality in Kern County and Bakersfield OB-GYN Dr. Arthur Park began with an email from the Medical Board of California in 2019.

This story is part of the series Moms and Babies at Risk.

In an interview with KVPR host and reporter Elizabeth Arakelian, KVPR’s Kerry Klein explains how she produced this series, including how she found credible information about Dr. Arthur Park, why she had to leave some information out of her final stories, and what it was like to report on maternal and infant mortality while pregnant.

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maternal mortality infant mortality Medical Board of California kern county Bakersfield Top Stories

Kerry Klein

Kerry Klein is an award-winning reporter whose coverage of public health, air pollution, drinking water access and wildfires in the San Joaquin Valley has been featured on NPR, KQED, Science Friday and Kaiser Health News. Her work has earned numerous regional Edward R. Murrow and Golden Mike Awards and has been recognized by the Association of Health Care Journalists and Society of Environmental Journalists. Her podcast Escape From Mammoth Pool was named a podcast “listeners couldn’t get enough of in 2021” by the radio aggregator NPR One.

See stories by Kerry Klein

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