Pien Huang
Pien Huang is a health reporter on the Science desk. She was NPR's first Reflect America Fellow, working with shows, desks and podcasts to bring more diverse voices to air and online.
She's a former producer for WBUR/NPR's On Point and was a 2018 Environmental Reporting Fellow with The GroundTruth Project at WCAI in Cape Cod, covering the human impact on climate change. As a freelance audio and digital reporter, Huang's stories on the environment, arts and culture have been 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 was also an adjunct instructor in podcasting and audio journalism at Northeastern University. She worked as a project manager for public artist Ralph Helmick to help plan and execute The Founder's Memorial in Abu Dhabi and with Stoltze Design to tell visual stories through graphic design. 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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Respiratory illnesses are rising after the holidays. CDC Director Mandy Cohen and other health experts share data and advice on how to navigate what is typically the peak respiratory virus season.
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This was the year a lot people finally exhaled. The pandemic was declared no longer an emergency. But viral threats are still with us and there are lessons we still haven't learned. -
Experts warn that new tropical viruses are headed for the U.S. – and the country should take active measures to fend them off. -
New CDC data shows that life expectancy in the U.S. is starting to recover, after it dropped during COVID-19 health emergency. Despite the gains, it still lags behind pre-pandemic times.
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A CDC analysis of 2022 data finds that U.S. life expectancy is improving after being knocked backwards during the COVID emergency. But it's still lower than it was pre-pandemic. -
The CDC finds that leishmaniasis, a skin disease spread by sand flies, is spreading at low levels in the southern U.S. It was previously considered a tropical disease only be acquired abroad.
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A new CDC report finds a rise in threats and verbal abuse aimed at health care workers since the start of the pandemic. The harassment is linked to high levels of anxiety, depression and burnout.
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COVID, flu and RSV are the big respiratory illnesses, but U.S. researchers have a clearer picture of other circulating viruses with wastewater surveillance. (Story aired on ATC on Oct. 20, 2023.)
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National data shows COVID-19 levels are moderate. In most of the U.S., levels of other respiratory viruses are low, although RSV is ticking up in some southeastern states. -
While COVID, flu and RSV remain the big three of respiratory illnesses in the U.S., researchers are getting a clearer picture of other circulating viruses with wastewater surveillance.