Yasmeen Abutaleb is a New York Times best selling author^[1][2] and journalist who was the national health policy reporter and as of August 4, 2022 is a White House reporter for The Washington Post.^[3]

Abutaleb graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland^[4] in 2010, where she first learned about journalism on their newspaper, the Black and White.

Abutaleb received a B.S. in microbiology and a B.A. in journalism from University of Maryland in 2014. She served as the editor-in-chief of the school's newspaper, The Diamondback from 2012-2013.^[5]

Abutaleb started her career covering health care for Reuters, focusing on the Affordable Care Act, drug pricing and federal health programs.^[6]

In 2016, she was one of three lead reporters on a five-part investigative series detailing the rising threat of antibiotic-resistant infections.^[7][8]

She joined The Washington Post in 2019 as a national reporter covering health policy. She focuses on the Department of Health and Human Services and health care in politics.^[9]

Throughout her career, Abutaleb has reported on the opioid crisis,^[10] changes to Medicaid^[11] and how politics influence health policies.^[12]

She has appeared on Washington Week,^[13] C-SPAN^[14] and MSNBC.^[15][16][17]

In June 2021,^[18] Abutaleb and Damian Paletta co-authored “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,” a book detailing the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in America.^[19][20]

The book most notably reveals that President Trump considered displacing infected passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship at Guantánamo Bay,^[21] and that the severity of President Trump's coronavirus infection was far worse than he originally let on.^{[22][23][24][25]}