Pien Huang
Pien Huang is a reporter on the Science desk, covering public health and health disparities. She also guest hosts on NPR news programs, and narrates the Moments in History series on the NPR One app.
She joined NPR in 2019 as the newsroom's first Reflect America Fellow, working with shows, desks and podcasts to bring more diverse voices to air and online. Her reporting, with NPR's visuals team, on tracking COVID-19 data won a 2022 Edward R. Murrow award.
She's a former producer for WBUR/NPR's On Point and a 2018 Environmental Reporting Fellow with The GroundTruth Project at WCAI in Cape Cod, covering the human impact on climate change. As a freelance reporter, Huang's stories on the environment, arts and culture were featured on NPR, the BBC and PRI's The World.
Huang's experiences span categories and continents. She was executive producer of Data Made to Matter, a podcast from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and has taught podcasting and audio journalism at Northeastern University.
In a detour from journalism, she worked as a project manager for public artist Ralph Helmick to help plan and execute The Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi. Huang has traveled with scientists looking for signs of environmental change in Cameroon's frogs, in Panama's plants and in the ocean water off the ice edge of Antarctica. She has a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard.
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Cyclospora, the parasite that has sickened thousands this summer in the U.S., requires time in the human digestive tract to reproduce. -
Trump's nominee faces the Senate health committee for her confirmation hearing on July 15. If confirmed, she will lead an agency dealing with workforce and leadership shortages and new layers of political review. -
It's prime tick season, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. The prevalence of ticks is changing the way some people in highly affected areas live their lives.
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Despite a diminished federal presence, public health departments are preparing for common ailments that could afflict fans who gather for the event — and are keeping an eye on the Ebola outbreak, too. -
A case of New World screwworm has been found in a calf in Texas. The flesh-eating fly, which was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s, poses a major threat to the cattle industry.
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The World Cup gets underway next week and millions will pack huge stadiums to watch. Public health officials will be watching too, only they're looking for germs that could spread at these matches!
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For months ahead of the World Cup, states and cities have been preparing to protect travelers and local communities from potential threats including foodborne illness and infectious diseases.
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The U.S. government is responding to the Ebola outbreak in with travel restrictions. American citizens and permanent residents departing affected countries must fly into one of three U.S. airports. -
The Department of Homeland Security is requiring all U.S. passengers returning from Ebola-affected countries to arrive at a single airport: Washington-Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
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The sheer number of cases and deaths are a sign that the outbreak might have been smoldering before the virus was identified.
