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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President-elect Trump continues to pick his new administration. He will nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz — known for The Dr. Oz Show on daytime TV — to head the agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid.
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President-elect Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of spreading conspiracies, including about vaccines, to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
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President-elect Donald Trump tried unsuccessfully to get rid of the Affordable Care Act during his first term. What action will he take this time around?
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RFK Jr. has embraced fringe health care ideas for decades. If Trump wins, he will likely be able to influence promotion and funding for these things.
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Doctors and clinics in Minnesota are building up capacity to care for out-of-state trans patients who are traveling for care. Some clinics have added testifying at the state house to their job duties.
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The survey published in JAMA Pediatrics showed that trans teens taking puberty blockers or hormones had very low rates of regret. -
Only one-in-four employers cover in vitro fertilization in health insurance, according to KFF's annual survey. The costs of IVF have become a hot topic in the presidential race.
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As states around it were passing bathroom bills and trans health care bans, Minnesota, under Gov. Tim Walz, went in the other direction, protecting transgender rights. -
An estimated 110,000 trans teenagers live in states that ban gender-affirming care for minors. Some travel huge distances every few months to keep getting their treatment out-of-state. -
Researchers with the Trevor Project analyzed data from 61,000 transgender and nonbinary young people. They found that after states passed anti-LGBTQ+ laws, young people in those states were more like to attempt suicide.
