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.
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With the growing costs of antidepressants and mental health care, many businesses are reluctant to provide health insurance coverage for mental illness. Yet others, like Delta, have found that paying for employee treatment saves money in the end. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
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The Department of Health and Human Services announces plan to computerize and standardize health records over the next 10 years. The new system, which would make patients' records available nationwide, is aimed at boosting privacy standards and improving health care efficiency. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
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A new report says the increasing death toll from the mosquito-borne disease can be reversed through international support of a new drug based on a Chinese herbal treatment. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
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The government has set new recommendatins for cholesterol levels, lowering the threshold for getting treatment. The idea is to save lives by using drugs more aggressively to lower patients' LDL cholesterol levels. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
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NPR's Joanne Silberner reports on the continuing controversy over a vaccine to prevent one of the leading killers of children in the so-called developing world, the rotavirus. The vaccine is currently too expensive for poor nations to afford, and the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccine are insisting on more testing.
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A new study finds that pharmaceutical companies boosted prices significantly in the months before the new Medicare drug benefit became law. The study, from the American Association of Retired Persons, used data provided by drug companies. Drug makers say that other studies, based on government data, are more accurate. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
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The federal government has just issued the largest survey to date of Americans' use of complementary and alternative medicine. The findings compile data on who uses alternative treatments like echinacea and acupuncture, and why. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
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Scientists have made rapid gains in learning about the SARS virus. But some predict it could be years before there's a vaccine. The World Health Organization says 5,900 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome have now been reported and that 212 victims have died. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.
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The World Health Organization lifts its warning against travel to Toronto, citing improved measures to stop the spread of SARS. But travel advisories remain in effect for Hong Kong and several provinces in China, where more than 150 people have died after contracting the disease. Hear NPR's Joanne Silberner and Laurie Garrett of Newsday.
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The CDC revises estimates of the number of SARS cases in the United States. The new number is much lower than previous counts, since the CDC no longer includes in the total those "suspected" of having the illness. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports.