Michaeleen Doucleff
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. For nearly a decade, she has been reporting for the radio and the web for NPR's global health outlet, Goats and Soda. Doucleff focuses on disease outbreaks, cross-cultural parenting, and women and children's health.
In 2014, Doucleff was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For the series, Doucleff reported on how the epidemic ravaged maternal health and how the virus spreads through the air. In 2019, Doucleff and Senior Producer Jane Greenhalgh produced a story about how Inuit parents teach children to control their anger. That story was the most popular one on NPR.org for the year; altogether readers have spent more than 16 years worth of time reading it.
In 2021, Doucleff published a book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, stemming from her reporting at NPR. That book became a New York Times bestseller.
Before coming to NPR in 2012, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. Doucleff has a bachelor degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a master's degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.
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One scientist is training the ultimate disease watchdogs — canines that can smell the disease's parasites living insideaperson's blood. -
The pharmaceutical giant will stop delivering its rotavirus vaccine to four West African countries and will begin to sell it in China for likely more than 10 times the cost. -
A report in The Lancet says the rate of cesarean sections has tripled globally since 1990. In some hospitals, more than 70 percent of births occur by C-section, putting moms and babies at risk. -
On Wednesday, world leaders made history by holding the first-ever high level meeting at the U.N. General Assembly focused on tuberculosis, which kills more people each year than HIV. -
For the first time, the U.N. General Assembly is holding a high-level meeting focused on tuberculosis — which is now the most deadly infectious disease. The hope is to end the epidemic by 2030.
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Chair design shifted dramatically about a hundred years ago, and it hasn't been good for our backs. Our daily lives are filled with chairs that make our posture worse. Luckily, we've got hacks. -
Scientists looked for respiratory viruses on surfaces throughout an international airport. -
In the past century, many Americans have lost the ability to sit in a way that doesn't strain their backs. Specialists say we could take a lesson from excellent sitters from other cultures.
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Global health activists say it's a big step toward wiping out malaria. But it will be tough to implement in poor countries. -
Many doctors in the U.S. say the practice puts an infant at risk of sleep-related death. A close look at the research reveals a different picture.
