Promoting pharmaceuticals is a big-money business, and reporters at ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent newsroom devoted to investigative journalism in the public interest, have been tracking the cash flow.

This week, ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber and Dan Nguyen reported that eight drug companies spent more than $220 million on promotional speakers for their products last year, and millions more on meals for physicians and other health care professionals.

The report is the latest in their series Dollars for Docs, which tracks industry payments to physicians and other health professionals.

As part of it, ProPublica has a database that tracks drug company payments to doctors; it currently includes $761.3 million in payments from 12 companies. For a list of payments to Connecticut professionals, click here.

Arielle Levin Becker covered health care for The Connecticut Mirror. She previously worked for The Hartford Courant, most recently as its health reporter, and has also covered small towns, courts and education in Connecticut and New Jersey. She was a finalist in 2009 for the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists, a recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the third-place winner in 2013 for an in-depth piece on caregivers from the National Association of Health Journalists. She is a 2004 graduate of Yale University.

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