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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The U.S. has confirmed more than 500 measles cases so far this year. That's 50 percent higher than the total number recorded last year, even though we're only about a quarter of the way through 2019.
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This year, the U.S. has confirmed 550 measles cases so far. A recent spike is connected to outbreaks in New York, but there are outbreaks in four other states too. -
After learning how parents in the Canadian Arctic address a child's misbehavior, I changed my tactics when my toddler would slap my face in anger. -
At the top of the world, the Inuit culture has developed a sophisticated way to sculpt kids' behavior without yelling or scolding. Could discipline actually be playful? -
At the top of the world, parents have figured out how to discipline kids without yelling, scolding or even speaking in an angry tone. Their secret is an ancient tool that sculpts children's behavior.
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Many people consider measles to be a quaint disease from the past. But it still kills over 100,000 children a year and can cause severe complications such as permanent hearing loss. -
While many people believe that how we feel and express anger is hard-wired, some scientists suggest our experience and culture help shape it. One way to get a handle on it may be to personalize it. -
A commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine issues a call to the medical community around the world. -
That's what a UNICEF official calls the conflict. And escalating violence in a key port city is jeopardizing aid to hundreds of thousands of starving children. -
One scientist is training the ultimate disease watchdogs — canines that can smell the disease's parasites living inside a person's blood.
