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.
-
NPR surveyed all 50 states about their contact tracing work. The workforce has barely grown since mid-June, while cases have skyrocketed.
-
The Trump administration had promised complete, transparent information on the coronavirus and hospital capacity. Instead, the new system has produced erratic updates and confusing numbers.
-
The Trump administration is directing hospitals to use a new platform to report COVID-19 data instead of an existing system at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
Pointing to the pandemic's disproportionate toll on people of color, over 1,200 workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call on the agency to declare racism a public health crisis.
-
NPR surveyed all 50 states to find out how many people they have doing contact tracing — one of the essential tools for keeping outbreaks from flaring up. Look up your state to see how it's doing.
-
Like millions of others, Liz McLemore always got her health insurance coverage through her job. In April, she suddenly had to figure out how to find coverage in the middle of a pandemic.
-
Adm. Brett Giroir says he will be "demobilized" from his role overseeing coronavirus testing at FEMA in mid-June and going back to his regular job at the Department of Health and Human Services.
-
At least 27 million Americans who lost their jobs in recent weeks also lost their health insurance, a new report finds. Others lacked a health plan even before COVID-19 hit. Here's how to find help.
-
To safely reopen without risking new COVID-19 outbreaks, states need staff to do the crucial work of contact tracing. Public health agencies report they have aggressive plans to grow their workforce.
-
With the nation's blood supply in shortage due to the coronavirus, the FDA recently eased restrictions on gay men donating blood. The letter argues those new rules are still too restrictive.