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Vikki Valentine

Vikki Valentine is a senior supervising editor on NPR's science desk. She oversees the network's global health and development coverage across broadcast and digital platforms. Previously, Valentine was the network's climate change, energy, and environment editor and in this role was a recipient of a 2012 DuPont Award for coverage of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania.

Valentine led a team that won a 2014 Peabody for its on-the-ground coverage of the largest Ebola outbreak in history: an epidemic in West Africa that spread to nearly 30,000 people. That coverage was also recognized by the Edward R. Murrow awards, a Pictures of the Year International's Award of Excellence, and by the Online News Association.

She was lead editor on the Gracie Award-winning series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" and "#15Girls." The 2018 series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" searched remote parts of the world and human evolutionary history for lost secrets to raising kids. The 2015 series "#15Girls" explored the pervasive and deadly discrimination girls in developing countries face.

Valentine won the 2009 National Academies Communication Award for the year-long multimedia project "Climate Connections." The series was also recognized by the 2008 National Academy of Sciences award, the Metcalf award for environmental journalism, the White House News Photographers Association awards, and the Webbys.

Prior to NPR, Valentine worked as a daily science news editor at Discovery.com and as a features editor and reporter at TheBaltimoreSun. Her writing has also been published by The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian Channel, Marketplace, Science Magazine, andWashingtonianMagazine.

Valentine received a master's from University College London's Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine. Her bachelor's is from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Writing under the name V.L. Valentine, she is the author of the historical thriller, The Plague Letters, and the forthcoming Begars Abbey.

  • Nimmu attends the Veerni boarding school in Jodhpur, India. The grade she gets on a national exam this year will decide her future.
  • Tuberculosis is an ancient disease, with afflictions recorded as far back as Egypt's pharaohs. Despite effective antibiotic treatments, TB very much remains a pressing global health issue.
  • Our first president was never the life of the party. Couldn't stand small talk. And some say he didn't even like to be touched. Yet in 1798 alone, more than 650 guests dined at his home. So what gives? Was Washington a closet bon vivant?
  • Arthritis, bunions, knee pain and shin splints; it's a pernicious group of injuries that frequently conspires to keep runners off the road. Dr. Mark Cucuzzella and Danny Dreyer, founder of the ChiRunning method, answer your questions about how to make running work for you.
  • To learn more about data safety monitoring boards and their role in protecting patients who participate in drug studies, NPR turned to statistician David DeMets. He says the current watchdog system for patient safety is a good one, but there are practical limits on the extent to which drugs can be monitored.
  • It's allergy season and your head is pounding, what do you take? Tylenol Sinus, Advil or Imitrex? And what's a vegan with migraine to do? Johns Hopkins Neurologist David Buchholz answers your questions on migraine and its nefarious symptoms.
  • Lawmakers in Massachusetts earlier this week enacted a sweeping healthcare bill that aims to insure almost every citizen over the next three years. NPR's Richard Knox speaks with health economist Stuart Altman about the bill's attractions and weaknesses.
  • Legislators say that by providing every Massachusetts resident with health insurance, the costs of health care are actually lowered. A look at how the bill would affect employers and individuals.
  • Republican and Democrat lawmakers on Capitol Hill are calling for a halt to a deal that hands over operations at six U.S. ports to a company owned by Dubai. President Bush threatened to veto any legislation seeking to delay the $6.8 billion takeover. A look at why the transaction is so controversial.
  • More than 13 million families in 2004 were unable at times to buy the food they needed. Finances are so strained with 5 million families that one or more members goes hungry as a result. Economic geographer Amy Glasmeier talks about the phenomenon of hunger in America.