USA TODAY staff

A USA TODAY NETWORK investigation of safety and security lapses at hundreds of secretive biodefense laboratories has won the prestigious Scripps Howard Award for public service reporting.

In the wake of some high-profile accidents at federal labs, the "Biolabs in Your Backyard" investigation, published throughout 2015, revealed hundreds of additional accidents at corporate, university, government and military labs nationwide. It also exposed a system of fragmented federal oversight and pervasive secrecy that obscures failings by facilities and regulators.

"This series draws power from its precision reporting about lab mistakes and near miss incidents that put scientists and the public at risk," the awards judges said in announcing the prizes on Tuesday. "It would not be an overstatement to say that the pressure for reform from USA Today's reporting has significantly reduced the possibility of a public health catastrophe."

The investigation has resulted in bipartisan House and Senate committee investigations and spurred federal regulators to re-examine how they oversee safety at labs working with potential bioterrorism pathogens, called “select agents.” The White House in October issued a sweeping, 187-page lab safety directive that cited the USA TODAY NETWORK’s reporting in calling for greater transparency and public accountability on lab accidents. And in November, the CDC replaced the director of its select agent lab regulation program.

This project — which is online at biolabs.usatoday.com — was the result of reporting by Alison Young, along with Nick Penzenstadler, Tom Vanden Brook and a team of journalists in local newsrooms across the USA TODAY NETWORK.

In the contest's opinion writing category, Nancy Kaffer, a political columnist for the Detroit Free Press, won for a body of work, particularly about the Flint, Mich., water crisis. Tim Swarens and Suzette Hackney of The Indianapolis Star were named finalists in this category for a series of editorials that fought for civil rights protections for LGBT citizens. Both newsrooms are part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.

Winners in other categories included The New York Times for human interest storytelling, The Wall Street Journal for business and economics reporting, BuzzFeed for investigative reporting, Frontline for television/cable in-depth coverage and The Boston Globe for distinguished service to the First Amendment. The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C., won two awards, for breaking news and for community journalism.

The USA TODAY NETWORK's biolabs investigation revealed that more than 100 labs working with potential bioterror pathogens have faced secret federal sanctions for safety violations, yet regulators allowed them to keep experimenting while failing on inspections, sometimes for years. Despite federal officials’ efforts to keep secret the identities of these troubled labs, the project named names, revealing they included several prestigious institutions, such as a university hosting a controversial new $1.25 billion federal biodefense lab.

Inside America's secretive biolabs

Reporters also exposed details about the operations and safety records of more than 200 high-containment labs across the nation, facilities whose identities have eluded even the Government Accountability Office. There is no publicly available list of such facilities and the GAO has warned that even the federal government doesn’t know where they all are because of a patchwork of regulation. The project's “Biolabs in Your Backyard” online interactive features individual stories about each facility and its research, plus more than 20,000 pages of safety records that dozens of labs fought to keep secret.

The Scripps Howard Foundation’s national journalism competition was established in 1953. Winners receive trophies and share $180,000 in cash prizes. The full list of Scripps Howard Awards winners is online. They will be recognized at an April 28 banquet in Phoenix.