Kate Martin joined APM Reports in October 2023 as a senior data reporter. She most recently served as the sexual violence and health reporter at NBC News, where she filed hundreds of state and local level records requests related to infant deaths. She contributed to an investigation that revealed more than 160 babies died in incidents involving nursing pillows since 2007. The team created a first-of-its-kind analysis based on public records and internal federal data to tell the story. A month after that investigation ran, the Consumer Product Safety Commission approved the first safety requirements for nursing pillows to prevent infant deaths.
Prior to her work at NBC, Martin was the lead investigative reporter at Carolina Public Press, where she served as the lead data reporter on an 11-newsroom project that examined the outcomes of sexual assault prosecutions in North Carolina. After the stories ran, North Carolina’s governor signed a law that eliminated two loopholes on consent. Another project, on the rarity of rural sexual assault nurse examiners, led state legislators to create a SANE nurse training hub at Fayetteville State University, an HBCU. Following this reporting, Congress approved $30 million per year to train and retain SANE nurses in rural tribal communities through 2028. Her work has earned dozens of statewide honors. She lives in North Carolina and graduated from the College of Charleston.