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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Despite a massive hiring push last year, health agencies around the U.S. failed to contain the pandemic through contact tracing. Health leaders reflect on lessons learned and what's next. -
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shifted its stance this week on the need to wear masks if you're vaccinated. What's that mean for kids? For travel? For work? Experts weigh in.
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A new Harvard poll shows that only half of Americans trust the CDC — other health agencies were rated even lower. During a pandemic, trust is critical to the success of a public health response.
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The announcement, which effectively reverses a Trump-era rule, springs from last summer's landmark Supreme Court decision banning employment discrimination against LGBTQ people.
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The Biden administration announced a website and text line to help people find COVID-19 vaccines near where they live. It's a new and improved version of VaccineFinder, which launched in February.
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An advisory group for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meets Friday to weigh lifting the pause in the use of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.
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From now until August, you can sign up for or change coverage through the federal and state health insurance marketplaces. Many people are eligible for better or less expensive plans — or both.
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The Food and Drug Administration says Abbott's BinaxNOW test and Quidel's QuickVue can be sold without a prescription.
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If we want life to get back to normal in the U.S., public health experts say we can't just rely on COVID-19 vaccines. Other tools like contact tracing and care coordination are crucial too.
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With a third COVID-19 vaccine authorized, some worry that there will be a two-tier vaccine rollout — with the apparently most effective going to the powerful, rich and well-connected.
