Pien Huang
Pien Huang is a health reporter on the Science desk. She was NPR's first Reflect America Fellow, working with shows, desks and podcasts to bring more diverse voices to air and online.
She's a former producer for WBUR/NPR's On Point and was a 2018 Environmental Reporting Fellow with The GroundTruth Project at WCAI in Cape Cod, covering the human impact on climate change. As a freelance audio and digital reporter, Huang's stories on the environment, arts and culture have been featured on NPR, the BBC and PRI's The World.
Huang's experiences span categories and continents. She was executive producer of Data Made to Matter, a podcast from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and was also an adjunct instructor in podcasting and audio journalism at Northeastern University. She worked as a project manager for public artist Ralph Helmick to help plan and execute The Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi and with Stoltze Design to tell visual stories through graphic design. Huang has traveled with scientists looking for signs of environmental change in Cameroon's frogs, in Panama's plants and in the ocean water off the ice edge of Antarctica. She has a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard.
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For the first time since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became health secretary, vaccine advisers to the CDC are meeting to discuss vaccines for RSV, HPV, COVID and more. -
As the dust settles from the first wave of firings at health agencies, here's how many people got cut and the impact of the roles that were lost. -
The fires have turned some electric car batteries and household items into "unexploded ordnances," says an EPA official tasked with the cleanup -
A deeper dive into Wednesday's post-election interview with former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his skepticism of public health expertise.
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NPR's Pien Huang weighs in on RFK Jr.'s skepticism of conventional public health expertise and his recommendation to remove fluoride from the drinking water.
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The EPA issued a final rule requiring water systems to replace all lead pipes within 10 years. Water advocates lauded the rule as a public health victory, but say there's much work to be done.
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Officials in Asheville say the city's water systems were "severely damaged" in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Precise assessments are hard, since roads have washed away.
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A new study finds more than 3,000 chemicals used in food packaging are getting into people's bodies. Some — including BPA, phthalates and PFAS — have clear health concerns; others are unstudied.
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Treatment plants that filter "forever chemicals" from drinking water in Orange County, Calif., are models for water systems across the country that will need to comply with EPA rules by 2029.
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It's the first outbreak of the deadly mosquito-borne disease they've seen in four years, and has prompted neighborhood spraying and the closure of public parks in affected areas.
