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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.

  • When the pandemic hit, mental health professionals predicted lockdowns and social distancing would result in a wave of loneliness. But researchers who study loneliness say that hasn't happened.
  • The federal government wants the nation's employers to help in the fight against the H1N1 swine flu. It's developed a set of guidelines for businesses to follow. The major goal is to keep sick workers at home, not at work spreading the flu.
  • The federal government has started testing vaccines against the swine flu. About 2,800 volunteers at eight sites across the country will be rolling up their sleeves in the next week to receive experimental flu shots. U.S. Health officials are preparing for a possible fall outbreak.
  • U.S. officials say it is too early to say whether the swine flu threat is receding. When the outbreak was first detected, the U.S. government was prepared. Morning Edition goes behind the scenes to the strategy center at the Department of Health and Human Services that is coordinating the medical response.
  • As scientists investigate the new swine flu virus, they're asking some fundamental biological questions. Some of the unanswered questions are: How far will it spread and how much disease will it cause?
  • Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the goal of public health agencies in the U.S. is to minimize the impact of the new swine flu virus. Right now, he says, states with and without infections are receiving items from a national stockpile of things that can be used to fight the flu.
  • The World Health Organization has raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 4. President Obama has said the government is closely monitoring the new swine flu virus, and while it's cause for concern, it's not a cause for alarm.
  • President Obama named Margaret Hamburg as his choice to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Hamburg led New York City through a tuberculosis epidemic as health commissioner in the 1990s.
  • President Obama is expected to name former New York City Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to lead the troubled Food and Drug Administration.
  • Former New York City Health Commissioner Margaret "Peggy" Hamburg is expected to be President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration. Hamburg is currently with the Nuclear Threat Initiative in Washington.