Gabrielle Emanuel
Gabrielle Emanuel covers Global Health and Development for NPR's Science Desk.
Emanuel loves taking a complex issue and finding the person or story that can make it relatable to a general audience. She reports on infectious diseases (such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis), non-infections diseases (such as cancer and heart disease) and neglected diseases (such as schistosomiasis and river blindness) — as well as how people access health care. She keeps tabs on many of the big global health priorities, including improving maternal and child health.
She's covered everything from Ebola outbreaks, to access to eye glasses, to counterfeit medications.
Emanuel joined NPR's Science Desk in 2024. Before that, she covered health at WBUR in Boston. She started her career in journalism at NPR as a Kroc Fellow where she covered education — and reported a podcast episode with Planet Money on the bartering economy where zoos and aquariums swap animals. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times and on This American Life.
Emanuel has won multiple awards including National Edward R. Murrow Awards — one for education coverage and one for reporting on the Massachusetts family shelter system — and the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award for Feature Reporting for a story uncovering the Reverse Freedom Rides of the 1960s.
Emanuel got her BA in history from Dartmouth College and completed her doctorate in policy at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. When she finds a free moment, she loves woodworking and delving into how best to bring American history to life for children.
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The Trump Administration has ushered in a fundamental shift in the U.S. approach to global health aid. How will the newly elected Democratic Congress weigh in? -
The penguins that perished lived on the Danger Islands in Antarctica. The prime suspect was avian flu. Researchers were surprised by what they found. -
A global treaty signed by 197 countries — including Russia — requires reporting any death that could be a sign of an outbreak to come. -
International Health Regulations mandate that countries share information about illness that may affect people beyond their borders. It's being put to the test after a Russian plague researcher died.
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In some towns in India, a visitor to the post office who's squinting at fine print might be asked: Do you want an eye test? -
In some towns in India, people working for a non profit approach people who appear to have trouble reading small print to get them hooked up with glasses.
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The staff of a wildlife preserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo are trying desperately to keep their gorillas from exposure to Ebola. Gorillas can get it and almost all of them die from it.
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Three brothers say their mother and father died after losing access to their HIV medications. Now the boys are figuring out how to navigate life. -
In Pakistan, taxes on menstrual products can add up. Activists have long worked to change this. Now a new budget wipes out the 18% sales tax. But questions remain about the impact on prices. -
The Ebola outbreak is taking place in a region that has been through decades of deadly conflict. That's affecting how responders are doing their work, from testing to treating patients.
