Michaeleen Doucleff
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. For nearly a decade, she has been reporting for the radio and the web for NPR's global health outlet, Goats and Soda. Doucleff focuses on disease outbreaks, cross-cultural parenting, and women and children's health.
In 2014, Doucleff was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For the series, Doucleff reported on how the epidemic ravaged maternal health and how the virus spreads through the air. In 2019, Doucleff and Senior Producer Jane Greenhalgh produced a story about how Inuit parents teach children to control their anger. That story was the most popular one on NPR.org for the year; altogether readers have spent more than 16 years worth of time reading it.
In 2021, Doucleff published a book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, stemming from her reporting at NPR. That book became a New York Times bestseller.
Before coming to NPR in 2012, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. Doucleff has a bachelor degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a master's degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.
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The U.S. is facing a shortage of the monkeypox vaccine as the outbreak grows rapidly. The White House is pursuing a controversial strategy where each person only gets a fraction of the full dose.
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Back in 2017, a doctor in Nigeria noticed how fast a local outbreak of monkeypox was spreading. He tried unsuccessfully to warn the world that Nigeria's outbreak could spread globally.
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Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Can you get it on a crowded bus? Trying on clothes? We talk to specialists about how this virus is transmitted and what kinds of precautions are warranted.
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There's increasing concern that the window of opportunity to contain the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. has closed. Some experts say it's already too late.
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Dr. Dimie Ogoina detected monkeypox in an 11-year-old patient in 2017 and saw many other cases since. He's tried to warn health officials that the virus has changed the way it spreads — to no avail.
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Researchers say the U.S. monkeypox outbreak is much larger than the CDC is reporting. Symptomatic people are being denied testing, so it's unclear how many people are infected and spreading the virus.
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The monkeypox outbreak has grown to more than 800 cases in dozens of countries. Officials say cases are going undetected because the disease looks different than what's described in medical textbooks.
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Their prediction stemmed from the eradication of smallpox. Here's what they said more than three decades ago — and how it foreshadowed events of 2022.
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Although monkeypox's recent spread has caused concern, its similarities to smallpox have given the public health world a head start on combating it.
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The cases point to possible sexual transmission of this cousin of smallpox — a previously unknown method of spread for monkeypox.
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The COVID-19 pandemic is having a surprising silver lining — it's breathing new life into the fight against HIV by accelerating the development of a new type of HIV vaccine.
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New versions of omicron are circulating in the United States and South Africa. Two new studies shed light on the potential for future surges — and the risk factor if you've already had omicron.