Patti Neighmond
Award-winning journalist Patti Neighmond is NPR's health policy correspondent. Her reports air regularly on NPR newsmagazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition.
Based in Los Angeles, Neighmond has covered health care policy since April 1987. She joined NPR's staff in 1981, covering local New York City news as well as the United Nations. In 1984, she became a producer for NPR's science unit and specialized in science and environmental issues.
Neighmond has earned a broad array of awards for her reporting. In 1993, she received the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for coverage of health reform. That same year, she received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for a story on a young quadriplegic who convinced Georgia officials that she could live at home less expensively and more happily than in a nursing home. In 1990, Neighmond won the World Hunger Award for a story about healthcare and low-income children. She received two awards in 1989: a George Polk Award for her powerful ten-part series on AIDS patient Archie Harrison, who was taking the anti-viral drug AZT; and a Major Armstrong Award for her series on the Canadian health care system. The Population Institute, based in Washington, DC, has presented its radio documentary award to Neighmond twice: in 1988 for "Family Planning in India" and in 1984 for her coverage of overpopulation in Mexico. Her 1987 report "AIDS and Doctors" won the National Press Club Award for Consumer Journalism, and her two-part series on the aquaculture industry earned the 1986 American Association for the Advancement of Science Award.
Neighmond began her career in journalism in 1978, at the Pacifica Foundation's DC bureau, where she covered Capitol Hill and the White House. She began freelance reporting for NPR from New York City in 1980. Neighmond earned her bachelor's degree in English and drama from the University of Maryland, and now lives in Los Angeles.
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Three studies of post-menopausal women show low-fat diets don't prevent heart disease, breast cancer or colon cancer. The report appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. Two years ago, the same studies showed that hormone replacement therapy didn't prevent disease.
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Common skin cancers have more than tripled among young adults over the past decade. A study shows that the rising rates are due to increased exposure to ultraviolet light and ozone depletion in the atmosphere.
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Researchers find children who suffer anxiety are more prone to eating disorders later in life. A comparison of some 700 women with eating disorders to those without them found that women with the disorders were twice as likely to have suffered anxiety as children. NPR's Patricia Neighmond reports.
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Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is recovering from a tracheotomy performed over the weekend as part of his treatment for thyroid cancer. Some cancer researchers say the surgery suggests he may have an aggressive form of the disease. Hear NPR's Patricia Neighmond.
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Hospitals are increasingly closing cardiac rehabilitation centers, reacting to uncertainty over how to pay for treatments. Despite proof that physical therapy and counseling improve survival rates after a heart attack, only one-third of patients receive it. NPR's Patricia Neighmond reports.
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An organism similar to viruses that cause measles and mumps may be behind a global outbreak of a new form pneumonia, known as SARS. World health officials also report it looks like the disease is on its way to containment. NPR's Patricia Neighmond reports.