Richard Knox
Since he joined NPR in 2000, Knox has covered a broad range of issues and events in public health, medicine, and science. His reports can be heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Talk of the Nation, and newscasts.
Among other things, Knox's NPR reports have examined the impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa, North America, and the Caribbean; anthrax terrorism; smallpox and other bioterrorism preparedness issues; the rising cost of medical care; early detection of lung cancer; community caregiving; music and the brain; and the SARS epidemic.
Before joining NPR, Knox covered medicine and health for The Boston Globe. His award-winning 1995 articles on medical errors are considered landmarks in the national movement to prevent medical mistakes. Knox is a graduate of the University of Illinois and Columbia University. He has held yearlong fellowships at Stanford and Harvard Universities, and is the author of a 1993 book on Germany's health care system.
He and his wife Jean, an editor, live in Boston. They have two daughters.
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Because dust, mold and pests can trigger asthma attacks, addressing these triggers in the home can keep kids from winding up in the hospital. In the past seven years, the Community Asthma Initiative in Boston has counseled more than a thousand families on how to prevent attacks.
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French researchers confirm that the immune systems of 14 adults are apparently controlling HIV without medication. It's further evidence that early treatment may prevent the virus from establishing "reservoirs" of HIV-infected cells in the body.
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Americans who suffer cardiac arrest in a hospital and are resuscitated have a 60 percent chance of being alive a year later, authors of a new study found. They also have a 45 percent chance of living for three years — better than the odds of surviving cancer.
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Researchers in France and the U.S. say watching a resuscitation attempt doesn't have lingering bad effects on relatives — it can actually be beneficial for them. But a researcher says there will be pushback on the practice from U.S. medical personnel because of their fear of being sued.
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Women who took aspirin at least a couple of times a week for five years or more cut their risk of melanoma by 30 percent. The new study adds to the mounting pile of research suggesting that cheap, common aspirin lowers the risk of many cancers, including colon, breast, esophagus, stomach, prostate, bladder and ovarian cancer.
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Texas health officials have quarantined a Nepalese man, who illegally entered the U.S. while infected with a particularly dangerous type of tuberculosis. He traveled through 13 countries, potentially exposing hundreds of people around the world to the pathogen.
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Scientists say a Mississippi child has been cured of HIV. The research findings, released Sunday, could help cure other HIV-infected newborns.
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Every year about 300,000 babies in sub-Saharan Africa are born with HIV. A new strategy aims to reduce these infections by putting every pregnant woman with HIV on drug treatment for the rest of her life. The approach has worked well, so far, in the small country of Malawi.
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Only about 800 women younger than 40 get the kind of breast cancer that has spread to bones or other organs by the time it's diagnosed. But that number tripled in a generation, and scientists are left wondering what's the cause.
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A new poll explores how crucial everyday decisions are made in American households about food and exercise.