"Stephanie Kuzydym is a sports enterprise and investigative journalist for The Louisville Courier Journal, which is part of the USA TODAY Network. For the last decade, Kuzydym’s reporting largely focused on health and safety of athletes. In “Safer Sidelines,” a four-part series based on several months of reporting, Kuzydym uncovered the many ways high schools, athletic associations and lawmakers have failed to prepare for the worst-case scenario – sudden death in sports. The project included a first-of-its-kind searchable database of U.S. athlete deaths, as well as a survey and expert assessment of athletic emergency action plans for Kentucky high schools.

Safer Sidelines was heralded as a catalyst for change and called "the single most impactful contribution to the health and safety of high school athletes that has ever been produced from a media source in our country’s history," by Dr. Doug Casa, the CEO of the Korey Stringer Institute, who has dedicated his career to shining a light on sudden death in athletes.

Kuzydym’s work received the 2023 National Athletic Trainers' Association’s President’s Service Award, the 2023 NATA Secondary School Committee’s Advocacy Award, the 2023 Korey Stringer Institute’s Lifesaving Education Award and the 2023 Jon Fleischaker Freedom of Information Award."