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 Editionworking 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, , and went on to study documentary radio at the , before coming to NPR as an intern in 2009.
She lives in Washington, DC, with her spouse and kids.
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As COVID-19 hospitalizations surge, new data released by the federal government show how many hospitals are struggling with staffing. -
One of the two leading vaccine candidates requires deep, deep freezing. Here's how communities are working to solve for this and how the new Moderna vaccine could help.
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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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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 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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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.
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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.
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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.
