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. -
The Trump administration has canceled all but a handful of grants meant to teach teenagers and caregivers about reducing teen pregnancies, arguing they are "normalizing sexual activity for minors."
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Republicans stripped Planned Parenthood and several other healthcare providers of Medicaid funding for one year, but now clinics can resume billing Medicaid for non-abortion services.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that states can bar trans girls and women from participating in school sports teams. But states that choose to may also allow trans athletes to participate.
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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. -
The Trump administration has been trying to get medical records of trans youth from hospitals for months. A federal judge in California just issued a temporary restraining order.
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The Dobbs decision returned abortion policy to the states. Four years later, NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin examines how that promise has played out in practice.
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Work rules for sick people on Medicaid will be stricter than advocates had hoped. The Trump administration released its guidance for states, which have to stand up the new bureaucracies by Jan. 1.
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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.
