About | Cast & Crew
Helen Palmer
Marketplace Health Desk, Boston
Helen Palmer gardens and keeps bees.
Since 1998, she has also covered health care for Marketplace, a beat she calls fascinating as it ranges from arcane cutting edge medical research to mundane details of health delivery.
She admits to little training in science — though as a child in her native England, she lived above her pharmacist father's shop. She credits her after school job in her dad's shop for a life-long curiosity about medicine and health.
Armed with a degree in English and Theater, Palmer joined the BBC. She worked as sound mixer, producer, reporter and host on numerous programs, including the morning news flagship, Today, where she covered current affairs, and the arts. She also wrote and directed Playschool, a BBC television program for pre-school children.
In 1985 she moved to Berlin, Germany. where she worked as reporter, producer and host for the British Force Broadcasting Service, and made documentaries for the BBC.
In 1990, she joined Monitor Radio in Boston, the broadcast service of the Christian Science Monitor. Again, she worked as producer, reporter and host for Monitor's news programs, and co-hosted the award winning program "The Balkans: Which Way Out?"
Her ambition is to understand the labyrinthine complexities of American health care — and maybe win an award for her honey.
