Jason Beaubien
Jason Beaubien is NPR's Global Health and Development Correspondent on the Science Desk.
In this role, he reports on a range of issues across the world. He's covered the plight of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, mass cataract surgeries in Ethiopia, abortion in El Salvador, poisonous gold mines in Nigeria, drug-resistant malaria in Myanmar and tuberculosis in Tajikistan. He was part of a team of reporters at NPR that won a Peabody Award in 2015 for their extensive coverage of the West Africa Ebola outbreak. His current beat also examines development issues including why Niger has the highest birth rate in the world, can private schools serve some of the poorest kids on the planet and the links between obesity and economic growth.
Prior to becoming the Global Health and Development Correspondent in 2012, Beaubien spent four years based in Mexico City covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. In that role, Beaubien filed stories on politics in Cuba, the 2010 Haitian earthquake, the FMLN victory in El Salvador, the world's richest man and Mexico's brutal drug war.
For his first multi-part series as the Mexico City correspondent, Beaubien drove the length of the U.S./Mexico border making a point to touch his toes in both oceans. The stories chronicled the economic, social and political changes along the violent frontier.
In 2002, Beaubien joined NPR after volunteering to cover a coup attempt in the Ivory Coast. Over the next four years, Beaubien worked as a foreign correspondent in sub-Saharan Africa, visiting 27 countries on the continent. His reporting ranged from poverty on the world's poorest continent, the HIV in the epicenter of the epidemic, and the all-night a cappella contests in South Africa, to Afro-pop stars in Nigeria and a trial of white mercenaries in Equatorial Guinea.
During this time, he covered the famines and wars of Africa, as well as inspiring preachers and Nobel laureates. Beaubien was one of the first journalists to report on the huge exodus of people out of Sudan's Darfur region into Chad, as villagers fled some of the initial attacks by the Janjawid. He reported extensively on the steady deterioration of Zimbabwe and still has a collection of worthless Zimbabwean currency.
In 2006, Beaubien was awarded a Knight-Wallace fellowship at the University of Michigan to study the relationship between the developed and the developing world.
Beaubien grew up in Maine, started his radio career as an intern at NPR Member Station KQED in San Francisco and worked at WBUR in Boston before joining NPR.
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Health officials have long known that virus from the oral vaccine can contaminate water supplies; they underestimated how big a problem this would be.
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The World Health Organization is celebrating the eradication of another strain of the polio virus. Yet major challenges remain in the global effort to get rid of the disease.
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As the U.S. grapples with the opioid crisis, pain medication is in short supply in some other parts of the world. One nurse in the Gambia explains how she addresses pain with tools other than drugs.
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Parts of the island nation are still in ruins, thousands remain displaced and rebuilding efforts have only just begun. But locals and volunteers are making a difference.
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In theory no one should die of cholera. Yet 90,000 people die each year from the disease, which is surging at a historic pace in Yemen and surfacing in Sudan.
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It's been a month since Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas. The hardest hit area was Marsh Harbour which is still struggling to come back. Most residents have fled, further slowing recovery.
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While the opioid problem in the U.S. is about too many opioids, in some countries there are few options for treating or controlling pain.
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In the Bahamian capital of Nassau, officials are dealing with thousands of evacuees from the hurricane-ravaged islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama. The problem they face is how to accommodate them all.
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"Anywhere we could put a warehouse has been destroyed by floodwaters and may not be safe for storing supplies," one aid group says of the widespread destruction brought by Hurricane Dorian.
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After Hurricane Dorian devastated two islands in the northern Bahamas, people are debating whether to leave their homes. On hard-hit Abaco Island, people are discovering it's not a clear-cut decision.