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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Nearly 16 million people have already signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. There are still three more days to sign up. (Story aired on ATC on Jan. 12, 2023.)
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Public health officials want more Americans to get the latest COVID vaccine booster. Only 35% of people over 65 have gotten the shot, though 75% of COVID deaths are among people in this age group.
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In states with abortion bans, doctors may hesitate to provide abortion care in a medical emergency. Some ethicists argue doctors should practice civil disobedience and put patients' lives first.
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Doctors in states with abortion bans can face prison time and lose their licenses if they violate the laws. Some are calling on doctors to openly defy the bans.
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In a departure from earlier Supreme Court decisions on abortion, Justice Alito's abortion opinion barely mentions medicine. This creates a perilous new legal reality for doctors, legal analysts say.
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Federal officials have a favorite refrain about COVID-19: "We have the tools." There's just one problem: As those who have worked to end HIV for decades know, just having the tools is not enough.
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As states begin to relax mask mandates, individuals have to make their own decisions about how and when to mask.
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The White House launched two new efforts to help Americans get free access to rapid COVID tests. It's still hard to find tests, and reimbursement for tests bought at a store isn't necessarily easy.
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The new CDC guidelines for COVID-19 isolation and quarantine have garnered a lot of criticism. And this is just one example of the agency's on going communication problems.
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Scientists may not know for a couple weeks yet how risky the new coronavirus variant will be to public health. But getting out front now about what is known helps dispel misinformation, they say.