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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Tyson Hamrick, the symphony’s director of education and youth orchestra, explains a new initiative to help students affected by the end of Asheville Middle School’s strings class. -
The 413-2 vote closes the ethics case against the Western North Carolina congressman. Edwards apologized to two former staffers and his wife, but continued to deny that he sexually harassed the women. -
Health officials say people may have been exposed at two locations in Asheville and Hendersonville after an out-of-state resident traveled through the area while infectious. -
An NIH grant will fund an unconventional strategy at UNC Asheville against drug-resistant bacteria and it's undergraduates, not graduate students, are doing the lab work. -
Henderson County has confirmed more cyclosporiasis cases this month than it typically sees in a year. Buncombe County is also reporting cases as counts rise statewide. -
For decades Hayes Baxley has pointed his camera at the wildest places on earth. Polar bears in the Arctic. Jaguars in Brazil. Among his favorites: the underwater assignments. -
After nearly three years as BPR's afternoon voice, Jose Sandoval reflects on life in western North Carolina, covering Hurricane Helene and what's next in Rochester, New York. -
Superintendent Rob Jackson made the announcement at the close of a celebratory end-of-school-year board meeting, bringing full circle a career that began in Buncombe County Schools in 1992. -
Henderson County bore the brunt of flash foods over Memorial Day weekend, washing out roads, flooding homes -
Two WNC communities among the hardest hit by Hurricane Helene will get new flood storage, restored wetlands and stabilized riverbanks along the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers.
