Helen Chickering
Morning Edition Host, ReporterHelen Chickering is a host and reporter on Blue Ridge Public Radio. She joined the station in November 2014.
Helen grew up in Texas. Her broadcast career began in television news in 1985 at WLBT, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi. There she did everything from news to weather and found her niche in medical reporting. Over the next 20 years she covered health and science news on both local and national levels, including 5 years in Charlotte at the CBS affiliate, WBTV. In 1998, Helen helped launch the health and science desk at NBC News Channel, the network's affiliate news service. She became the first journalist to serve as president of the National Association of Medical Communicators and was on the founding board of the Science Communicators of North Carolina.
In 2012, Helen and her family moved to Asheville from Chapel Hill and she started working as a freelance producer and as a Montessori teaching assistant. A longtime NPR listener, she was thrilled to land a job at Blue Ridge Public Radio. Helen is an active member of the Asheville Science Tavern and a guest lecturer and an advisory board member at the University of North Carolina's Medical and Science Journalism Program.
Email: hchickering@bpr.org
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The new COVID-19 vaccines are available at local pharmacies in Western North Carolina and at some health departments -
A former dude ranch in Candler is North Carolina's newest state park. The state is collecting public input as it shapes the parks master plan.
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BPR reflections on longtime Asheville Citizen Times journalist Tony Kiss.
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North Carolina residents have a new tool to track how local governments are spending their share of the the approximately $1.2 billion in opioid settlement funds.
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Project Aspire clears another hurdle and heads to Asheville City Council for approval.
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The A-B Tech culinary team competed against three other teams in what has been dubbed the Culinary Final Four. BPR’s Helen Chickering joined the team in the kitchen for one of their final practice runs before the American Culinary Federation National Competition.
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BPR's Helen Chickering talks with freelance reporter Jordan Wilke about his piece in The Guardian covering the recent Supreme Court ruling rejecting a bid by North Carolina Republican lawmakers to give state legislatures sweeping authority in drawing congressional maps and regulating federal elections, and the effort by those same lawmakers to push through new state election legislation.
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A new pathway opens east of Asheville near Old Fort. BPR’s Helen Chickering caught up two people who worked behind-the-scenes on the Bernard Mountain Trail.
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In an unexpected turn of events, Dr. Maggie Fehrman has been appointed as the new superintendent of Asheville City Schools, after Dr. Rick Cruz announced his withdrawal from the position.
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North Carolina's air quality has been impacted by the smoke funneling into the region from raging Canadian wildfires. Find out more about the color-coded alerts issued by the NC Department of Environmental Quality.
