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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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. -
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. -
The Supreme Court has issued an order that keeps the abortion drug mifepristone available through telehealth prescriptions -- for now.
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Full access to the abortion pill mifepristone, including through telemedicine and the mail, will continue for at least three more days, the high court said on Monday. -
A panel of judges in Louisiana has just ended telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone nationally.
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate HELP Committee Wednesday to answer questions about measles, vaccines, nutrition and budget cuts.
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An end to birthright citizenship would mean a new layer of bureaucracy for all babies born in the U.S. and could cause delays for health insurance and other benefits. -
The Guttmacher Institute has a new analysis on how many abortions happened in 2025. -
A self-employed couple already had to dip into retirement savings for health costs. Now, they are skipping vacations and canceling streaming to afford health insurance.
