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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Puerto Rico has more reported cases of Zika than many other places in the region, and the number of cases continues to rise. Unfortunately, Zika is just one of the island's many problems. -
Tapeworms, hookworms, leeches. Millions of specimens. This collection has it all — except legs. -
Dr. Marlen Baroso works at the health center in Beira, a port city in Mozambique. She treats patients with ailments, accident victims, women in labor — and thousands of people with HIV. -
In a pilot program in South Africa, teens who are not infected with HIV are going on a preventive regimen of anti-AIDS drugs. -
When the conference was held there in 2000, HIV was terrifying. It was spreading rapidly and an infection was viewed as a death sentence. Now, conference attendees celebrate a sea change around HIV.
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The world has wiped out only one human disease: smallpox. Guinea worm disease looks like it's on the verge of being the second. -
They're in a crowded refugee camp, running the only hospital in a war-torn corner of South Sudan. -
Dr. Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization, offered congratulations for victories on the health front — and words of serious concern about the future. -
The massacre reportedly occurred at a church compound, where the victims were forced into a shipping container. Amnesty International is calling it a "war crime." -
A U.N. camp for displaced persons tells the story of South Sudan's woes. Its 120,000 residents, mostly kids, came to escape civil war violence and a growing food crisis.
