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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Physicians must treat in line with patients' wishes and standards of care. Some medical ethicists say that abortion bans will force doctors to disregard these obligations in order to follow the law. -
NPR talks to Claire Hannan, who has helped navigate vaccine rollouts in all 50 states, about some of the challenges involved in quickly getting shots out to millions of young kids.
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After the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, we asked for your questions about the future of abortion care in the U.S. Here's what our health experts said.
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The Supreme Court will soon rule on a case that could end the nationwide right to abortion. You've sent us your questions about what will happen if 'Roe v. Wade' is overturned. Some experts answer.
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Thanks to at-home testing, official reports are missing a lot of the COVID cases circulating now. Is the U.S. in the midst of an invisible surge? Here's how to assess the situation where you live.
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A large share of the nearly 1 million people who died of COVID in the U.S. may have lived if they'd gotten vaccinated. A new analysis shows how many lives could have been saved across the country.
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Abortion providers explain the myriad circumstances in which someone might end a pregnancy. Situations can be complex, plus, pregnancy can be risky.
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The U.S. assistant secretary for health, who will speak at Texas Christian University, says physicians need to be more vocal in fighting politically motivated attacks on vulnerable trans youth.
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The U.S. needs to ensure everyone has an equitable chance to protect themselves, and if people don't have that opportunity, they need to be able to rely on others to be compassionate, he says.
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One law professor has a theory about the Justice Department's slow response — and it all goes back to a case involving "heavy knitted underwear" from the 1940s.
