Joanne Silberner
Joanne Silberner is a health policy correspondent for National Public Radio. She covers medicine, health reform, and changes in the health care marketplace.
Silberner has been with NPR since 1992. Prior to that she spent five years covering consumer health and medical research at U.S. News & World Report. In addition she has worked at Science News magazine, Science Digest, and has freelanced for various publications. She has been published in The Washington Post, Health, USA Today, American Health, Practical Horseman, Encyclopedia Britannica, and others.
She was a fellow for a year at the Harvard School of Public Health, and from 1997-1998, she had a Kaiser Family Foundation media fellowship. During that fellowship she chronicled the closing of a state mental hospital. Silberner also had a fellowship to study the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Silberner has won awards for her work from the Society of Professional Journalists, the New York State Mental Health Association, the March of Dimes, Easter Seals, the American Heart Association, and others. Her work has also earned her a Unity Award and a Clarion Award.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Silberner holds her B.A. in biology. She has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
She currently resides in Washington, D.C.
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Chocolate is a wonderful thing, but how can it help combat global climate change? Cacao trees — the source of chocolate — grow well in rainforests, and rainforests store carbon. So researchers are working to help preserve the forest and to grow more chocolate. -
Even with the latest buzz surrounding product recalls, it can be difficult to stay updated on what has been cleared off the shelves. One Baltimore art student missed a contact-solution recall announcement — and found out about it the hard way.
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A new survey shows a significant decline in the incomes of primary care doctors between 1995 and 2003. During that same period, the U.S. was trying to get more medical students to go into primary care. The drop was largely the result of reduced payments by insurance companies. One Washington, D.C., family doctor is trying to reverse the trend.
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A night spent with Dr. Arthur Kellerman at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital reveals a lot about why patients spend hours waiting in emergency rooms. A combination of citywide shortages of hospital beds and uninsured patients can result in days-long backups. -
On Thursday, an expert panel will tell the FDA whether a new vaccine against the human papilloma virus is ready to use. HPV can be sexually transmitted and can cause cervical cancer. It affects about 10,000 American women a year, and it kills about 3,700.
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A new study comes to a conclusion that surprised even the researchers who conducted it: Middle-aged whites in England are significantly healthier than middle-aged whites in the United States. That's despite the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person on health care.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Researchers have identified clusters of genes that appear to be linked to the tiredness and lack of energy associated with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The findings, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, could lead to a better understanding of the condition.
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Dealing with a potentially fatal cancer is difficult for anyone. Doctors with cancer face a special challenge. They're used to giving medical care, not getting it. Two doctors, Elizabeth McKinley and William Tierney, share what they learned as patients.
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Drugs to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder prompt continued debate. An advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration has recommended "black box" warnings for all, but a second panel, made up mostly of child psychiatrists and pediatricians, says the dangers do not merit such a warning.
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Americans get surgery for lower-back pain at a higher rate than any other country. Whether that's too many, too few -- or just right -- is a hotly debated subject in orthopedics. At the center of the debate is how to decide who should get surgery for lower back pain.
