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.
-
A new lawsuit brought by 44 states and Puerto Rico alleges an "industrywide" conspiracy by generic drug manufacturers to collude on prices and divide up the market. -
As head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar is charged with making Trump's plan to end HIV in the U.S. by 2030 work. "We have an historic opportunity," he tells NPR. -
There are, thankfully, tons of places to get parenting advice: relatives, co-workers, books and the Internet. The problem is that sometimes that advice is totally contradictory. -
Pregnant Women: Avoid Soft Cheeses, But Do Get These ShotsDoctors want to remind moms to get certain vaccines while pregnant. Whooping cough in particular can be deadly for newborns, but only about 50 percent of pregnant women get the vaccine. -
With teen pregnancy rates in some communities stubbornly high, some schools are trying something different: hire a midwife. -
A growing number of schools are offering training for emotional and social skills that can benefit kids in school and throughout their life. -
The Trump administration laid out limits on how much flexibility it would allow states in running Medicaid. Work requirements are in and lifetime caps are out. -
One in four calls to the Washington, D.C., 911 line isn't an emergency. The city now has triage nurses working with dispatchers to get callers with less urgent needs a same-day clinic visit instead. -
PrEP is shorthand for a pill that prevents HIV infection, if taken daily. As Washington, D.C. aims to cut new infections in half by 2020, it hopes to quadruple the number of residents on the medicine. -
The horror movie is a hit at the box office, but poses a conundrum for those who like to take in their cinema with snacks.