Joe Neel
NPR Deputy Senior Supervising Editor
Joe Neel started filing stories about medicine and health as a freelancer for NPR in 1994. He joined the NPR staff in 1996. Currently, he's a deputy senior supervising editor and a correspondent on the Science Desk.
As a leader of NPR's award-winning health and science coverage, Neel focuses on stories about medical research and health-care delivery. His interests and responsibilities range widely — from domestic to global health policy, alternative health to the pharmaceutical industry, and state and local health issues to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. Medicare, Medicaid, and military and veterans' health are also part of his portfolio.
Neel won the prestigious Kaiser Family Foundation Media Fellowship for 2006-7.
During his tenure as editor, NPR's health reporters and correspondents have won numerous awards, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society for Professional Journalists, the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting on Congress, the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Journalism Prize and the Association of Health Care Journalism award.
Neel graduated in 1979 from Washington University in St. Louis with bachelor's degrees in Biology and German Literature and Language. He also studied biology at the Universitaet Tuebingen in Germany.
Neel lives in Washington and spends as much time as he can enjoying ballet and the visual arts.
