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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What happened to abortion numbers since Roe v. Wade fell? The Guttmacher Institute has new state-by-state numbers that show people are traveling for the procedure.
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For the first time ever, nursing homes may soon have to guarantee a registered nurse is working 24/7 in every facility. -
The federal government may soon change how marijuana is regulated. The Drug Enforcement Administration has kicked off a review of whether marijuana should remain a strictly controlled substance.
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The Inflation Reduction Act gives the federal government power to negotiate the price of certain drugs for Medicare. It marks a change to prescription drug policy that's been decades in the making.
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The government will negotiate new prices for the commonly prescribed drugs, but the cuts won't take effect until 2026. In the meantime, drugmakers are fighting the negotiations with lawsuits. -
Two children and their parents are suing the state of Florida, alleging that their Medicaid coverage was terminated without proper notice or a chance to contest the state agency's decision. -
Starting Sept. 1, limited abortion care will be legal in Texas in two pregnancy circumstances. Getting that through the conservative Texas legislature required "masterful and discreet" lawmaking. -
It will no longer be illegal to terminate a pregnancy in Texas if the pregnant person's water breaks too early for the fetus to survive.
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Dr. Austin Dennard is an OB-GYN who is going to give birth very soon. She also had to leave Texas to terminate a previous pregnancy because the fetus had a fatal condition. -
The appeals court backs restricting the use of mifepristone, a pill used in medication abortions. But previous action by the Supreme Court means the status quo holds for now.
