Joanne Silberner
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.
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Baltimore's Department of Health has developed a plan for dealing with the new Medicare drug benefit. It treats Medicare Part D as a medical emergency, with a response center to handle problems, active outreach to pharmacies, and a fund for purchasing drugs for people who fall between the cracks. -
A Mars factory in Pennsylvania turns out millions of pieces of Dove dark chocolate using a secret method that preserves a compound found in raw cocoa beans. If Mars can harness that compound, chocolate may turn from a comfort food to a health food. -
Medicare recipients can now sign up to get prescription drug insurance through Medicare. But a confusing array of programs and lack of easily found details are keeping some seniors from figuring out the new system, the biggest change in Medicare since it started 40 years ago.
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Last March, Indonesia saw its first polio case in 10 years. Now, 300 children have been crippled and 60,000 infected. Before health officials can stamp polio out, they'll have to win over parents distrustful of the vaccine. -
A large new study finds that digital mammograms are better at detecting breast cancer than traditional methods that rely on X-ray film. But the results apply only to certain groups of women.
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Health planning experts can't find any evidence that annual physical exams benefit healthy adults. But a new survey shows that 65 percent of doctors still perform the regular checkups. They say the benefits may be difficult to quantify, but they are real.
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The Medicare program that helps the elderly and disabled pay their medical bills turns 40. The legislation was decades in the making, and the final bill was written in just two days, a result of compromises and expediencies. Many health planners feared it would fall apart. But it has become one of the most popular government programs ever.
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The Senate votes to approve Lester Crawford to be the next head of the Food and Drug Administration. Crawford has been acting commissioner since the spring of 2004. He becomes the official head of an agency that has been criticized for its inaction over controversial issues, including the delayed approval of emergency contraceptives.
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A new study shows that barely a third of Americans with mental illness get proper treatment. And most people with mental illness get their care from primary care physicians. Primary care doctors say they see people who don't want to believe they have a mental illness, and don't want to get treated for one.
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Merck Chairman and CEO Raymond Gilmartin will step down ahead of his planned retirement next year. He says the decision for an early departure from the pharmaceutical company is his own. Merck faces thousands of lawsuits from people who suffered heart attacks or strokes while taking the painkiller Vioxx.
