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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Recent rule changes made it easier for patients to get abortion pills through the mail, using telehealth services. Now there is growing demand for these services – and new legal battles brewing. -
Some people have had trouble getting Paxlovid pills quickly, despite the administration's effort to ease access after a COVID test confirms infection.
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A federal judge's decision to strike down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's mask mandate for travelers is only the latest in a series of challenges that seek to rein in the agency.
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In public health circles, there's growing concern that the CDC is being hamstrung in ways that are hurting the pandemic response and that could limit the agency's tools in the future.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will require travelers to mask up in airports, planes, buses, trains and at transit hubs until May 3. That mandate had been set to expire next week.
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The Biden administration will continue to require travelers to wear masks on planes and other forms of public transport,.
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The rise of the more infectious BA.2 variant in the U.S. — plus signals in the sewage — also point to a possible uptick in cases, and have health officials on alert.
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States and health providers report they've dispensed less than half their supply from the government, raising fears that the drugs may go to waste while people who could benefit get sicker.
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The Biden administration's new program enables high-risk patients who test positive to get antiviral pills on the spot in some pharmacies. But many pharmacies won't be able to participate.
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A new program will pair tests and COVID pills in pharmacies, solving some of the timing issues with the pills. This is currently limited to pharmacies that have an on-site prescribing clinician.
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The federal health agency released new guidance for when Americans need to mask up indoors, saying about 70% of the population lives in a place where it's safe to go mask free.
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The antiviral pill molnupiravir was authorized and distributed by the government late last year. But it's not doctors' first choice of treatment, except for a narrow slice of patients.
