Rob Stein
Rob Stein is a correspondent and senior editor on NPR's science desk.
An award-winning science journalist with more than 30 years of experience, Stein mostly covers health and medicine. He tends to focus on stories that illustrate the intersection of science, health, politics, social trends, ethics, and federal science policy. He tracks genetics, stem cells, cancer research, women's health issues, and other science, medical, and health policy news.
Before NPR, Stein worked at The Washington Post for 16 years, first as the newspaper's science editor and then as a national health reporter. Earlier in his career, Stein spent about four years as an editor at NPR's science desk. Before that, he was a science reporter for United Press International (UPI) in Boston and the science editor of the international wire service in Washington.
Stein's work has been honored by many organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association for Cancer Research, and the Association of Health Care Journalists. He was twice part of NPR teams that won Peabody Awards.
Stein frequently represents NPR, speaking at universities, international meetings and other venues, including the University of Cambridge in Britain, the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea, and the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC.
Stein is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He completed a journalism fellowship at the Harvard School of Public Health, a program in science and religion at the University of Cambridge, and a summer science writer's workshop at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.
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Some hospitals are filling up as respiratory infections hits hard and early. It happening just as flu season starts up and another possible COVID-19 wave approaches.
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Biden received a new COVID booster as part of the administration's push to increase uptake, but two new research papers cast doubt on whether they are any better than the original vaccines.
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The Food and Drug Administration authorized the new bivalent omicron boosters for kids as young as 5 years old. The shots could roll out almost immediately.
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The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases and the CDC are urging people to get flu shots. Both groups say the flu is likely to come back after a two-year hiatus, and it could be a bad year.
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Pfzier-BioNTech and Moderna are asking the Food and Drug Administration to authorize the new omicron boosters for young children.
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President Biden says the pandemic "is over," but public health experts, epidemiologists, infectious disease researchers and others strongly disagree, saying his remarks endanger efforts to save lives.
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How has the rollout of the new COVID-19 vaccine boosters gone so far? Shots are plentiful, waits are short, but demand is uncertain.
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It's a strange moment in the pandemic. For most vaccinated people, the risk of severe illness has gone way down. But hundreds are dying of COVID-19 every day. So how dangerous is the virus now?
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New COVID-19 vaccine boosters designed to combat recent subvariants of the coronavirus are being made available to people over 12 years old. We have some guidance on who should get one and when.
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CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has signed off on updated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that target the original virus and the omicron subvariants.
