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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#WeCount, the Society of Family Planning's ongoing tally of abortions in the U.S., indicates the abortion rate has remained relatively steady, but people are traveling to get the procedure.
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A new report shows that monthly costs for those health plans rose in 2023. Premiums increased 7%, and that trend is expected to continue next year.
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The health care giant and the coalition of unions that walked out for three days earlier this month announced a contract deal that averts another strike. -
A government shutdown is looming but not every federal office will close completely. Some critical services will continue as employees work without pay. -
As House Republicans struggle to keep the federal government open beyond September 30, NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with a trio of NPR correspondents about the potential impact of a government shutdown.
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A survey of 2,000 people found no shared definition of the word "abortion," researchers at the Guttmacher Institute report. -
People will be able to go to COVIDTests.gov and get four free tests per household, starting Monday. The Biden administration says it is trying to prepare for the fall and winter COVID season. -
Patients and doctors in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma are taking legal action against state abortion bans. Women told dramatic stories of dangerous pregnancies and delayed care. -
The Center for Reproductive Rights is filing lawsuits in three different states over delayed and denied abortions. (Story first aired on All Things Considered on Sept. 12, 2023.)
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The Center for Reproductive Rights has announced lawsuits in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma that tell dramatic stories describing how abortion laws interfered with patients' care.
