Joe Neel
Joe Neel is NPR's deputy senior supervising editor and a correspondent on the Science Desk.
As a leader of NPR's award-winning health and science team, Neel directs coverage of breaking news in health and science, ranging from disease outbreaks and advances in medical research to debates over health reform and public health.
Joe also plays a key role in overseeing the Science Desk's award-winning enterprise reporting. Among his current projects and responsibilities, Neel supervises the Monday "Your Health" segment on Morning Edition. He also directs several ongoing editorial partnerships. One, a partnership with Kaiser Health News and public radio member stations, focuses on health care in the United States. Another is a polling project on health issues with the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Neel has played a key role in expanding the network's coverage of global health and development issues. He is currently focused on domestic health issues, including cutting-edge biomedical research and developments in the health industry, such as the Affordable Care Act.
In 2008, he launched NPR's "Your Health" podcast and helped launch and grow "Shots," NPR's health blog, in 2010.
In addition to his responsibilities at NPR's Science Desk, Neel also regularly serves as newsroom manager, overseeing the network's overall news coverage.
During his tenure as editor, NPR's health reporters and correspondents have won numerous awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award, the National Academy of Sciences Communication Award, the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society for Professional Journalists, the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting on Congress, the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Journalism Prize, and the Association of Health Care Journalism award. Neel was awarded the prestigious Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellowship in 2007.
Neel started filing stories about medicine and health as a freelancer for NPR in 1994 and joined the staff two years later.
He earned bachelor degrees from Washington University in St. Louis in both biology and German literature and language. He also studied biology at the Universitaet Tuebingen in Germany.
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Kids ages 5 to 11 will soon be able to get Pfizer's low-dose COVID vaccine. CDC director Rochelle Walensky agreed with a unanimous decision of a team of advisers that the benefits outweigh the risks. -
The agency acted after an independent panel of scientists strongly supported the move. Kids could start getting vaccinated within the week. -
After some debate, a group of scientists advising the FDA concluded that the vaccine's benefits outweigh its risks for young children. -
Many families are under financial stress, parents see kids seriously behind in school, huge rent bills and looming evictions and delayed medical care has negative consequences, to name a few.
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The CDC information dated Thursday gives new details on this variant of the coronavirus and says the agency should "acknowledge that the war has changed." It was first reported by The Washington Post. -
The cases have been seen mostly in teens and young adults between 12 and 39 years old. No deaths have been associated with this side effect of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. -
In advance of a COVID-19 vaccine being available, a group of independent medical advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention weighed Friday who should get the vaccine first and how. -
In the largest U.S. cities, at least half of all households have seen a serious financial loss such as lost job, wages or savings. Many problems are concentrated in Black and Latino households.
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Emily Miller was central in defending the FDA commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, after he falsely said that blood plasma could lower the death rate from COVID-19 by more than a third. -
The agency said Friday that using hydroxychloroquine and a related compound, chloroquine, for COVID-19 may cause life-threatening side effects. That warning contradicts the president's own enthusiasm.
