Seema Yasmin

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]

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]

• 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.^[30]
• 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.^[31]

• The Impatient Dr. Lange: One Man's Fight to End the Global HIV Epidemic, ISBN 9781421426624 Joep Lange Institute (31 August 2018). "Seema Yasmin introduces her book The Impatient Dr. Lange". YouTube. Retrieved 1 November 2018.^[32][33]
• Yasmin, Seema; Azim, Fahmida (2020). Muslim women are everything : stereotype-shattering stories of courage, inspiration, and adventure. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-294703-1. OCLC 1111254482.^[34][35]
• "From Liberia, Ebola Survivors Report They Are Still Afflicted with Disabling Symptoms". Scientific American. Retrieved 11 May 2020.^[36]
• If God is a virus: poems. Haymarket Press. 2021. ISBN 9781642594591.
• Yasmin, Seema (2021). Viral BS : medical myths and why we fall for them. ISBN 978-1-4214-4040-8.^[28]
• Yasmin, Seema (2022). What the fact? (First ed.). New York. ISBN 978-1-6659-0003-4. OCLC 1344013866.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

• 2016 University of North Texas Mayborn Award for Literary Non-Fiction^[37]
• 2016 won an Emmy Award for her documentary Hidden Threat: The Kissing Bug and Chagas Disease^[38][39]
• 2017 John S. Knight Fellow in Journalism.^[1]
• 2017 Pulitzer Prize Finalist.^[23][40]