Rebecca Hersher
Rebecca Hersher (she/her) is a reporter on NPR's Science Desk, where she reports on outbreaks, natural disasters, and environmental and health research. Since coming to NPR in 2011, she has covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, embedded with the Afghan army after the American combat mission ended, and reported on floods and hurricanes in the U.S. She's also reported on research about puppies. Before her work on the Science Desk, she was a producer for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered in Los Angeles.
Hersher was part of the NPR team that won a Peabody award for coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and produced a story from Liberia that won an Edward R. Murrow award for use of sound. She was a finalist for the 2017 Daniel Schorr prize; a 2017 Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting fellow, reporting on sanitation in Haiti; and a 2015 NPR Above the Fray fellow, investigating the causes of the suicide epidemic in Greenland.
Prior to working at NPR, Hersher reported on biomedical research and pharmaceutical news for Nature Medicine.
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Sea levels are rising even faster on the East Coast and Gulf Coast. And advances in climate science mean we can see the future clearly for the first time.
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When hurricanes cause both extreme high tides and heavy rains, devastating floods ensue. Such storms will get much more frequent by the end of the century, according to a new study. -
Health, Science & EnvironmentClimate change means more flood risk from rising seas, hurricanes and heavy rain. Black communities in the southern U.S. are in the crosshairs, according to a new analysis. -
The Department of Housing and Urban Development disproportionately sells homes in flood-prone areas, NPR finds. Housing experts warn that this can lead to big losses for vulnerable families. -
The U.N. has released the most comprehensive global climate science report ever. It is unequivocal: Humans must stop burning fossil fuels or suffer catastrophic impacts. -
Hundreds of scientists are meeting to finalize a landmark climate report. It's meant to guide the next decade of international climate policy, but it's unclear if politicians will act on it. -
The people who need help the most after disasters are least able to get it from the federal government. Internal records show that FEMA knows it has a problem. -
Climate and health policies rely on scientific expertise. But the federal science workforce has been shaped by decades of political interference, underfunding and race and gender bias. -
The computer model that predicts the weather is getting more power. Climate change is upping the stakes for forecasters as extreme weather gets more common and residents demand earlier warnings. -
Scientists on five continents are hunting for geological evidence to pinpoint exactly when humans became a major force shaping life on Earth. But settling on the date could unleash a larger debate.
