Seema Yasmin

Last updated

Seema Yasmin
Born
Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England
Alma mater
Scientific career
Institutions

Seema Yasmin is a British-American physician, writer and science communicator based at Stanford University. She is Director of Research and Education at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. [1] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Yasmin helped to debunk myths about the coronavirus.

Contents

Education and early career

Yasmin was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England and raised in London to a family of Indian and Burmese ancestry. [2] [3] [4] Her mother, Yasmin Halima, was born in India and is a Distinguished Careers Institute fellow who works on women's health. [5] At the age of seventeen, Yasmin decided that she wanted to take her mother's first name as her surname, and had her name changed with a lawyer. [5] Yasmin trained in biochemistry at Queen Mary University of London and graduated in 2005. [6] She moved to the University of Cambridge to complete a graduate programme in medicine. [7] She started her medical career in the National Health Service, working at Homerton University Hospital for one year. In 2010 Yasmin was awarded a University of California, Los Angeles fellowship to train in clinical research in Botswana. [8] She moved to the United States with her mother. [5] In 2011, Yasmin joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service [9] as a "disease detective" at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she studied outbreaks of disease in prisons, border towns and American Indian reservations. [10] Whilst studying an outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria on the Navajo Nation, Yasmin realised the power of effective science communication, and realised that she wanted to use journalism to shift public policy. [5]

Career

In 2013 Yasmin was made a Dalla Lana Global Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto. [11] Here she focussed on telling the stories of epidemics in an effort to encourage others to learn from tragedy. [12] Soon after completing her fellowship, Yasmin joined The Dallas Morning News as a reporter. [7] [13] Her work there included coverage of the Ebola crisis in Dallas and the epidemic of gun violence in the US. [14] [15] She was a medical analyst for CNN, and had a weekly medical segment on television news partner NBC 5 DFW. [7] She held a simultaneous position as Professor of Public Health at the University of Texas at Dallas. [16] [8] Yasmin delivered the 2016 University of Texas at Austin McGovern Lecture, where she discussed the lessons she had learned reporting from public health emergencies. [17]

Yasmin joined Stanford University as a John S. Knight Fellow in 2017. There she investigated the spread of misinformation and pseudoscience during epidemics. [18] As part of this fellowship, Yasmin started working with Wired to debunk pseudoscience and misinformation on YouTube. She delivered a talk at the TEDx OakLawn event in 2018. In 2019 Yasmin was appointed as Director of the Stanford University Health Communication Initiative. [5]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Yasmin used social media, podcasts, [19] and popular science articles to better inform the public about the coronavirus disease. [20] [21] [22] She is also interested in the "spread of myths and hoaxes and rumors and outright lies about vaccines". [23] Yasmin became one of the most trusted public health experts on social media. [24] She used webinars to teach students about how to report responsibly on medical emergencies. [25] [26] In an interview with Bumble, Yasmin explained how to date during the pandemic. [27] A collection of her essays on health and medical misinformation from her newspaper column “Debunked” was published in 2021 as Viral BS : medical myths and why we fall for them. [28]

Her second book, Muslim Women Are Everything, started as a conversation on Twitter and ended as a six-figure book deal. [29]

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed scientific papers

Selected works

Awards and honours

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. 1 2 "Seema Yasmin". John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  2. ↑ @DoctorYasmin (4 July 2020). "And George Eliot. Since I was born in Nuneaton and still haven't read Middlemarch" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  3. ↑ "Former Dallas journalist's tweet-turned-essay on 'Muslim women do things' earns six-figure book deal". The Dallas Morning News. 16 May 2019. Archived from the original on 18 May 2019. Retrieved 30 May 2021.
  4. ↑ Yasmin, Seema (2020). Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 3. ISBN   978-1-4214-4040-8.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Q&A: mother and daughter Yasmin Halima and Seema Yasmin". The Stanford Daily. 30 January 2019. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  6. ↑ "Cambridge health specialist joins The Dallas Morning News". Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  7. 1 2 3 "Seema Yasmin | Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy". munkschool.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  8. 1 2 "CNN medical analyst, Dallas Morning News reporter, Munk School graduate". University of Toronto News. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  9. ↑ Yasmin, Seema (29 February 2020). "The CDC's 'Disease Detectives' Are Our Front-Line Defense Against Coronavirus". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  10. ↑ "Seema Yasmin's Profile | Stanford Profiles". profiles.stanford.edu. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  11. ↑ "The Dalla Lana Fellowship in Global Journalism — at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health". www.dlsph.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  12. ↑ Laughery, Chris. "In The Moment ... For Every Epidemic, A Story: Seema Yasmin & Communicating About Disease". listen.sdpb.org. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  13. ↑ "Why a doctor joined the Dallas Morning News as a reporter". Poynter. 21 July 2014. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  14. ↑ "Brit 'Disease Detective' Helps Ebola-Hit Dallas". Sky News. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  15. ↑ "Ebola Survivors". Pulitzer Center. 3 February 2016. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  16. ↑ "Public Health Professor Brings CDC Experience, Expertise - News Center - The University of Texas at Dallas". www.utdallas.edu. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  17. ↑ "McGovern Lecture: From Ebola to Zika: Lessons learned from reporting on public health emergencies - Texas Today: UT Events & Announcements Calendar". Texas Today: UT Events & Announcements Calendar. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  18. ↑ "Seema Yasmin". Center for Health Journalism. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  19. ↑ Intercepted (22 April 2020). "Intercepted Podcast: Coronavirus and the Radical Religious Right's Bumbling Messiah". The Intercept. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  20. ↑ "Dr. Seema Yasmin Debunks Coronavirus Myths". WIRED Videos. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  21. ↑ "What's a Pandemic? Your Coronavirus Questions, Answered". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  22. ↑ "How Covid-19 immunity compares to other diseases | WIRED Middle East". wired.me. 19 April 2020. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  23. 1 2 Ross, Martha. "Stanford doctor and author fights medical misinformation in time of COVID-19". mercurynews.com. The Mercury News. Archived from the original on 10 August 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  24. ↑ "Who Are Your Trusted Sources on COVID-19?". today.duke.edu. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  25. ↑ "On-Demand Student Webinar: Responsible Reporting on Epidemics with Dr. Seema Yasmin". Pulitzer Center. 8 April 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  26. ↑ MLive.com (3 February 2020). "Stanford doctor talks coronavirus, everything you need to know". mlive. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  27. ↑ "Bumble - How to Date During Coronavirus, According to an Epidemiologist". Bumble. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  28. 1 2 Yasmin, Seema (2021). Viral BS : medical myths and why we fall for them. Baltimore. ISBN   978-1-4214-4040-8. OCLC   1153340618.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  29. ↑ "Former Dallas journalist's tweet-turned-essay on 'Muslim women do things' earns six-figure book deal". Dallas News. 16 May 2019. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  30. ↑ Ngugi, E. N.; Roth, E.; Mastin, Theresa; Nderitu, M. G.; Yasmin, Seema (1 September 2012). "Female sex workers in Africa: Epidemiology overview, data gaps, ways forward". SAHARA-J: Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS. 9 (3): 148–153. doi:10.1080/17290376.2012.743825. ISSN   1729-0376. PMC   4560463 . PMID   23237069.
  31. ↑ Regan, Joanna J.; Traeger, Marc S.; Humpherys, Dwight; Mahoney, Dianna L.; Martinez, Michelle; Emerson, Ginny L.; Tack, Danielle M.; Geissler, Aimee; Yasmin, Seema; Lawson, Regina; Williams, Velda (1 June 2015). "Risk Factors for Fatal Outcome From Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in a Highly Endemic Area—Arizona, 2002–2011". Clinical Infectious Diseases. 60 (11): 1659–1666. doi: 10.1093/cid/civ116 . ISSN   1058-4838. PMC   4706357 . PMID   25697742.
  32. ↑ Yasmin, Seema. (2018). Impatient Dr. Lange : One Man's Fight to End the Global HIV Epidemic. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN   978-1-4214-2662-4. OCLC   1055272454.
  33. ↑ Joep Lange Institute (31 August 2018), Seema Yasmin introduces her book The Impatient Dr. Lange , retrieved 1 November 2018
  34. ↑ "Seema Yasmin". HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.<ref>Yasmin, Seema; Azim, Fahmida (2020). Muslim women are everything : stereotype-shattering stories of courage, inspiration, and adventure. HARPERCOLLINS. ISBN   978-0-06-294703-1. OCLC   1111254482.
  35. ↑ "Seema Yasmin". HarperCollins Publishers: World-Leading Book Publisher. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  36. ↑ "From Liberia, Ebola Survivors Report They Are Still Afflicted with Disabling Symptoms". Scientific American. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  37. ↑ "Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference awards $18,000 in cash prizes in writing competitions". UNT News. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  38. ↑ "2016 Lone Star EMMY Nominations | National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences – Lone Star". lonestaremmy.org. Retrieved 1 November 2018.
  39. ↑ parks, seema yasmin,scott friedman,eva (16 November 2015). "Hidden Threat: The Kissing Bug and Chagas disease". interactives.dallasnews.com. Retrieved 10 May 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  40. ↑ "Seema Yasmin GRANTEE". pulitzercenter.org. Pulitzer Center. Archived from the original on 28 September 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
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