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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Senators grill Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccines, abortion and Medicaid in his confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration. -
Some are describing Trump's recent orders as part of a campaign to reshape the military itself. But with an institution as vast as the Pentagon, the extent of the changes remain to be seen.
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The executive order speaks of transgender identity in sweeping and dismissive terms and sets the stage for a policy that is more restrictive and punitive than the ban from Trump's first term. -
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has built his fortune and reputation on disparaging the government scientists and institutions he's now in line to lead as HHS secretary. -
An email obtained by NPR says NIH employees are subject to a travel freeze and offers of employment are being rescinded. Scientists worry about disruptions to critical research. -
In a memo obtained by NPR, acting Health Secretary Dorothy Fink forbade staff from public communications on most matters until Feb. 1, unless they get express approval from "a presidential appointee." -
The most "relevant" results that come up in a search of "abortion" on HHS.gov, the website for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, are several years old, from the first Trump administration. -
About 24 million people have signed up for Affordable Care Act plans with about a week to go in open enrollment. But that could all change when President-elect Trump takes office.
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About 24 million people have signed up for Affordable Care Act plans with about a week to go in open enrollment. But President-elect Trump has talked about possibly repealing the 14-year-old ACA.
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Enrollment in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans has grown every year of the Biden administration, leading to a record high rate of people with insurance.
