NPR People

Joseph Shapiro, NPR Biography

Correspondent, Science Desk

Photo: Jay Paul

Joseph Shapiro covers health, aging, disability, and children and family issues for NPR. Before joining NPR in November 2001, Joe spent 19 years at U.S. News & World Report, where he wrote about healthcare and medicine, aging and long-term care, disability and chronic illness, children and families, poverty, civil rights, and other social policy issues. He also served as the magazine's Rome bureau chief, White House correspondent, and congressional reporter.

His journalism has won numerous awards, including honors from the Society of Professional Journalists for public service, the Casey Journalism Center for Children and Families for coverage of disadvantaged children, Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy for investigative journalism, the National Easter Seal Society, and the Education Press Association.

Shapiro's book, NO PITY: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (Random House/Three Rivers Press, 1993, 1994), has won awards from several major disability organizations.

In 1997, he completed a yearlong Kaiser media fellowship in health, to study long-term care, chronic care, and aging issues. In 1990, he won an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship to spend a year exploring disability issues.

Shapiro attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Carleton College. A native of Washington, DC, he resides there with his wife Suzanne Greenfield and two daughters.