Pien Huang
Pien Huang is a health reporter on the Science desk. She was NPR's first Reflect America Fellow, working with shows, desks and podcasts to bring more diverse voices to air and online.
She's a former producer for WBUR/NPR's On Point and was a 2018 Environmental Reporting Fellow with The GroundTruth Project at WCAI in Cape Cod, covering the human impact on climate change. As a freelance audio and digital reporter, Huang's stories on the environment, arts and culture have been featured on NPR, the BBC and PRI's The World.
Huang's experiences span categories and continents. She was executive producer of Data Made to Matter, a podcast from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and was also an adjunct instructor in podcasting and audio journalism at Northeastern University. She worked as a project manager for public artist Ralph Helmick to help plan and execute The Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi and with Stoltze Design to tell visual stories through graphic design. Huang has traveled with scientists looking for signs of environmental change in Cameroon's frogs, in Panama's plants and in the ocean water off the ice edge of Antarctica. She has a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard.
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As the marketing of soda and fast food ramps up around the world, the companies involved forge partnerships to help the poor. The new book 'Junk Food Politics' casts a critical eye at their efforts. -
People who lose track of time aren't rude, researchers say — they may just be listening to their inner timekeeper instead of an external clock. Living according to "event time" has its benefits. -
Fairfax County, Va., high school students are training to become public health "ambassadors." The program gives them a head start on a career while improving trust in the health system.
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In Fairfax County, Va., the health department is training high school students to become health ambassadors in underserved communities and get a leg up on future careers in public health. -
New U.S. doctors aren't choosing to specialize in infectious disease, despite the clear need. In 2022, 44% of the training programs went unfilled. The pay is relatively low, and the hours are long.
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The pandemic put infectious diseases doctors in the spotlight. The 'Fauci Effect' raised the number of fellowship applicants in 2020, but this year almost half of the training programs went unfilled. -
More than 3.5 million infusions of antibodies have been used to treat COVID. The treatment is being phased out because the antibodies have lost their efficacy against new variants of coronavirus.
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The disease formerly known as monkeypox has a new name: "mpox." It's not much of a depature, but it's less stigmatizing, according to advocates who have been calling for a change of name.
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The treatments were highly popular earlier in the pandemic. One by one, they got knocked out by more convenient, less expensive treatment options, and new COVID variants. -
For those at high risk, Pfizer's antiviral drug helps stave off severe COVID-19. Now research suggests it may also reduce their chances of long COVID.
