Selena Simmons-Duffin
Selena Simmons-Duffin reports on health policy for NPR.
Simmons-Duffin joined the Science Desk in 2019, just a few months before COVID-19 was discovered. During the pandemic, she covered CDC and the vaccine rollout, and ran a year-long project surveying state health departments on contact tracing. In 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she launched a project called Days & Weeks exploring how abortion bans are changing people's lives.
Before becoming a reporter, Simmons-Duffin worked for 10 years as a producer and editor for NPR's flagship programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In 2014, she drove the full length of the U.S.-Mexico border with host Steve Inskeep for the "Borderland" series.
She won a Gracie Award in 2015 for 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 is a graduate of Stanford University, where she studied English. She took six months 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 can be reached via encrypted message at selena.02 on Signal.
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The number of abortions is up in the United States. Is it because fewer people are using birth control pills? -
NPR has learned that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be pushing its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally. -
Health departments, universities and nonprofit grantees had spent months adapting to President Trump's executive orders. They say the funding cut was completely unexpected. -
Enrollment in Affordable Care Act insurance fell much more sharply in the first months of 2026 than it has in years past. Trump officials blame fraud. Health policy experts blame costs. -
A confusing patchwork of state laws began to take shape hours after the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022. Here's where things stand now on the abortion issue. -
Under President Trump, more federal attention and support has gone towards anti-abortion Christian centers. A watchdog group says many of them mislead patients with promises to "rule out" ectopic pregnancies. -
Trump's Department of Justice is seeking patient files that include the names of young people who have been treated in transgender clinics, as well as hospital staff who have provided care. -
Adults on Medicaid will be required to work 80 hours per month. The Trump administration says people who are sick will have to prove they are too sick to work to be exempt from the new work rules. -
In Washington state and Hawaii, residents can now get mifepristone and misoprostol from Planned Parenthood to keep in their cabinets in case they need to end a pregnancy at a later time. -
Enrollment in Healthcare.gov and the other marketplaces is plunging by 5 million, the new paper from KFF finds. Last year, Congress failed to make a deal to keep the coverage more affordable.
