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Joanne Silberner

  • Steve Barrett

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.

Why You Should Still Wear A Mask And Avoid Crowds After Getting The COVID-19 Vaccine

By • Jan 12, 2021

It may seem counterintuitive, but health officials say that even after you get vaccinated against COVID-19, you still need to practice the usual pandemic precautions, at least for a while. That means steering clear of crowds, continuing to wear a good mask in public, maintaining 6 feet or more of distance from people outside your household and frequently washing your hands. We talked to infectious disease specialists to get a better understanding of why.

Why do I have to continue with precautions after I've been vaccinated?

What You Need To Know As The First COVID-19 Vaccines Head Your Way

By • Dec 12, 2020

Updated at 4:45 p.m. ET, Monday, Dec. 21

Now that the Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency authorization for the first COVID-19 vaccines to be deployed in the U.S., you may have a lot of questions about what this means for you and the people you love. Here's what we know so far:

Who specifically is eligible for the vaccine now?

Anxiety, Depression Increased During Pandemic. Why Not Loneliness?

By • Oct 13, 2020

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Study: Kids More Likely To Die From Cars And Guns In U.S. Than Elsewhere

By • Dec 19, 2018

The major cause of death in children aged 1 to 19 years is not cancer or other another medical condition. It's injury. And by a long shot – 61 percent, versus 9 percent for cancer.

The largest cause of injury was motor vehicle crashes, and next was firearms, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study sorts through the 20,360 deaths of U.S. children and adolescents in 2016, as counted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Report: Facts About Migrants Don't Always Match What The Headlines Say

By • Dec 6, 2018

A new report by a commission empaneled by University College London and the Lancet medical journal offers a thorough — and often surprising — look at the medical and economic impacts of immigration.

Report: World Support For Mental Health Care Is 'Pitifully Small'

By • Oct 15, 2018

It's a major milestone in the fight to recognize mental health and mental illness as global issues: a comprehensive report from the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health, three years in the making, released this past week at a London summit with royals Prince William and Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, in attendance to show their support for the cause.

But it was not a celebratory event. Threaded throughout the 45-page report is a lament that the world is ignoring millions of suffering people.

Welcome To The Poison Garden: Medicine's Medieval Roots

By • Apr 27, 2017

From the front door of the glass-walled gift shop at the Alnwick Garden in the far northeast of England, the scene looks innocent enough. A sapphire green English lawn slopes gently downward, toward traditional, ornamental gardens of rose and bamboo. Across the small valley, water cascades down a terraced fountain.

But a hundred or so plantings kept behind bars in this castle's garden are more menacing — and have much to tell visitors about poison and the evolutionary roots of medicine.