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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The summer kicked off with a blitz of government activity to end surprise medical billing, but lobbying, impeachment, and policy arguments have left the future of the legislation up in the air.
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Two regulations announced Friday take aim at health care prices. One, to affect patients by 2021, addresses hospital rates. The second, a proposal, would require more upfront clarity from insurers. -
The federal government is suing drugmaker Gilead for alleged patent infringement. The suit charges the company violated patents on "PrEP" drugs that are used to prevent HIV infection.
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While the United Auto Workers strike continues, General Motors and the union are telling different stories about what's going on with the health benefits of striking workers and their families.
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Drugmakers hate the idea. But Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump both say pegging the prices of U.S. medicine to what people elsewhere pay could save U.S. patients a bundle. Here's how an "IPI" might work. -
Pregnant women at high or even moderate risk of developing the life-threatening condition preeclampsia should consider taking a very small dose of aspirin daily to prevent it, doctors say. -
Doctors and nurses are often barred from turning to FDA-approved medications that research shows to be the most effective way to quit. Critics of that policy say stigma is undermining best practice -
The $572 million judgment against Johnson & Johnson will cover one year of addiction treatment and prevention the judge says. But health economists predict it will take decades to abate the problem. -
The majority are Inuit. They laugh about his interest but also take it seriously. One says such talk is "extremely imperialistic and should not be something that we hear world leaders say in 2019." -
The Trump administration compares drug list prices to car sticker prices. But drugmakers can price medicines as high as the market will bear. And consumers have little bargaining power.
