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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For years now, Texas has banned practically all abortions. There is a medical exception to the ban — and the Texas Medical Board has been tasked with clarifying that exception.
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Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, state laws on abortion have been changing constantly. Bans, lawsuits and ballot measures will all be part of the picture as voters go to the polls in November.
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Maternal mortality got better in 2022, the latest year we have data for. It dropped back down to 2020 levels after spiking in 2021, according to a new report from CDC.
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The maternal mortality rate in the U.S. in 2022 – while still high – went back to where it was before deaths surged during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the latest CDC report. -
The time a person has to decide whether to have an abortion in Florida and other states with six-week abortion bans is at most two weeks. Why? It's has to do with how we date early pregnancy. -
The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled in favor of transgender patients on Monday. The case was brought by Medicaid recipients in West Virginia and state employees in North Carolina. -
A new regulation to protect the rights of pregnant workers is the subject of an anti-abortion lawsuit because it includes abortion as a pregnancy "related medical condition." -
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case about whether state law or federal law should prevail when they conflict during a serious pregnancy complication.
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The Supreme Court will consider the question: Should doctors treating pregnancy complications follow state or federal law if the laws conflict? Here's how the case could affect women and doctors. -
Studies worldwide show that queer people tend to have more older brothers than other kinds of siblings. Justin Torres, a queer novelist and the youngest of three brothers, asks: Should it matter?
