Selena Simmons-Duffin
Selena Simmons-Duffin reports on health policy for NPR.
She has worked at NPR for ten years as a show editor and producer, with one stopover at WAMU in 2017 as part of a staff exchange. For four months, she reported local Washington, DC, health stories, including a secretive maternity ward closure and a gesundheit machine.
Before coming to All Things Considered in 2016, Simmons-Duffin spent six years on Morning Edition working shifts at all hours and directing the show. She also drove the full length of the U.S.-Mexico border in 2014 for the "Borderland" series.
She won a Gracie Award in 2015 for creating a video called "Talking While Female," and a 2014 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award for producing a series on why you should love your microbes.
Simmons-Duffin attended Stanford University, where she majored in English. She took time off from college to do HIV/AIDS-related work in East Africa. She started out in radio at Stanford's radio station, KZSU, and went on to study documentary radio at the Salt Institute, before coming to NPR as an intern in 2009.
She lives in Washington, DC, with her spouse and kids.
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The Trump administration has been marked by a scaled-back federal investment and involvement in U.S. health care. Biden's team has plans to change that — even if Republicans retain Senate control.
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Where are hospitals reaching capacity? Which metro areas are running out of beds? NPR has learned federal agencies collect and analyze this information in detail but don't share it with the public.
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The federal government is offering nursing homes the chance to opt in to the new program, in which pharmacy staff would deliver and administer a future vaccine on site.
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A vaccine will only work if a lot of people can get immunized. State health officials are working furiously to design outreach and distribution plans, with little clarity from the federal government.
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The number of people working to stop COVID-19 outbreaks from spreading is far from the level needed in most states, according to a new NPR survey and analysis. Find out how your state is doing.
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The coronavirus outbreak originating at the White House may have spread cases to dozens of other communities. But tracing related cases and stopping further spread is extremely challenging.
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The President's diagnosis calls for contact tracing on a massive scale. Luckily, not everyone President Trump saw this week with is a high risk exposure. Here's who is.
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Draft documents obtained by NPR show that the federal government is preparing to enforce new data reporting requirements, threatening to withhold vital Medicare funding from noncompliant hospitals.
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"We've got to take a deep breath," says one health official about the rapid timeline pushed by the CDC. "It is very clear that we need to lean forward to prepare to deliver the vaccine."
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The information includes details on where transmission is happening most. If more states shared this widely, it could shape policy and save lives, health researchers say.