Michaeleen Doucleff
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. For nearly a decade, she has been reporting for the radio and the web for NPR's global health outlet, Goats and Soda. Doucleff focuses on disease outbreaks, cross-cultural parenting, and women and children's health.
In 2014, Doucleff was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For the series, Doucleff reported on how the epidemic ravaged maternal health and how the virus spreads through the air. In 2019, Doucleff and Senior Producer Jane Greenhalgh produced a story about how Inuit parents teach children to control their anger. That story was the most popular one on NPR.org for the year; altogether readers have spent more than 16 years worth of time reading it.
In 2021, Doucleff published a book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, stemming from her reporting at NPR. That book became a New York Times bestseller.
Before coming to NPR in 2012, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. Doucleff has a bachelor degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a master's degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.
-
A Canadian flight attendant had been blamed by media for years for bringing HIV to the U.S. A new study proves that's impossible. The virus that took hold came from Haiti in the early 1970s. -
Zombie bacteria in defrosting reindeer carcasses brought anthrax back to Siberia. Now the government wants to slaughter 250,000 reindeer to stop the spread. -
Drug resistance is no longer a matter of health. It could have massive implications for the world's economy and food supply. -
Think of it as a gift within a gift. Some beneficial gut bacteria contain viruses called "bacteriophages." And some of these phages now have been associated with good intestinal health in humans. -
So far, health officials know of 37 confirmed cases of people who contracted Zika from mosquitoes in Miami. But computer models suggest the underlying outbreak in Miami is bigger — and spreading. -
It seemed his vision of a world free of Guinea worm would come true this year. But the dogs of Chad have turned out to be a major problem. -
Russia is experiencing its first anthrax outbreak in more than 70 years. One child died. Health officials think it might have been triggered by warming permafrost, which unleashed dormant bacteria. -
Federal health officials are cautioning pregnant travelers to avoid a Miami neighborhood where at least 14 cases of the virus have been traced to local mosquitoes. What about the rest of Florida? -
AIDS is the biggest killer of young women in southern Africa, where many are sexually abused. The CEO of a nonprofit is trying to tip the balance to women with an unlikely tool: a vaginal ring. -
Scientists have evidence that the epidemic in Latin America may have started to subside. But the U.S. isn't out of the woods yet.
