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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Despite a diminished federal presence, public health departments are preparing for common ailments that could afflict fans who gather for the event — and are keeping an eye on the Ebola outbreak, too. -
A case of New World screwworm has been found in a calf in Texas. The flesh-eating fly, which was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1960s, poses a major threat to the cattle industry.
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The World Cup gets underway next week and millions will pack huge stadiums to watch. Public health officials will be watching too, only they're looking for germs that could spread at these matches!
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For months ahead of the World Cup, states and cities have been preparing to protect travelers and local communities from potential threats including foodborne illness and infectious diseases.
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The U.S. government is responding to the Ebola outbreak in with travel restrictions. American citizens and permanent residents departing affected countries must fly into one of three U.S. airports. -
The Department of Homeland Security is requiring all U.S. passengers returning from Ebola-affected countries to arrive at a single airport: Washington-Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
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Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is shaking up another important scientific panel, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
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Bringing the Ebola outbreak under control in 2014 was largely due to the extensive involvement from the U.S., through USAID, the White House, the CDC, and the military.
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The sheer number of cases and deaths are a sign that the outbreak might have been smoldering before the virus was identified. -
The hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship has potentially exposed passengers to a deadly disease. Most returning Americans are now housed in Nebraska. Some may be cleared to quarantine at home.
