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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The Supreme Court's unanimous ruling upholds access to mifepristone, a drug used in more than 60% of abortions. The decision shocked some doctors and abortion rights advocates. -
The two major presidential candidates have very different approaches to health policy. What are they, and how might they shape health care access over the next four years? -
The Texas Medical Board has drafted guidelines for doctors to decide when an abortion is necessary and legal under the state's strict ban. The rules were widely panned at a recent public hearing. -
With the governor of South Carolina's signature Tuesday, there are now 25 states with laws on the books banning trans health care for minors.
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State laws on abortion keep changing – with new bans taking effect in some places while new protections are enacted in others. And abortion will be on the ballot in at least four states.
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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.
