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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Public health figures believe a focus on boosters for the already vaccinated will hasten the emergence of new variants among the billions of unvaccinated people — including a vaccine-resistant strain. -
A leaked CDC document compared it to the highly contagious children's disease. Data does not support this claim. Nonetheless, the variant is one of the world's most contagious respiratory diseases.
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New research from China suggests people infected with the delta variant have, on average, about 1,000 times more virus in their respiratory tracts than those infected with the original strain. -
If you've been feeling blah recently, you're not alone. The good news is you can retrain your brain to feel happier. Here's how to shift your mood and restore your well-being. -
If you imagine viruses as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, that can help explain what happens when a coronavirus variant comes into contact with human cells.
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For decades, the U.S. has spent many millions hunting down viruses in hope of stopping a pandemic. Yet the efforts failed. A group of researchers thinks there's a better strategy for the future. -
The report states that the coronavirus most likely did not originate at the wet market in Wuhan and that a lab leak was "an extremely unlikely pathway." -
One day you're worrying about the regular old coronavirus. Then — seemingly out of the blue — there are variants. Worrisome variants! How did they come to be? And why are they likely more contagious?
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It appears to be 50% more infectious, and researchers predict the new coronavirus variant could start to dominate in the U.S. by March. The time to prepare is now, they say. -
Wealthy countries have a strategy to secure doses of any forthcoming vaccines. And that's creating a problem for lower-income nations.
