Camilla Foster
Camilla Foster writes health and families features that turn clinical and behavioural research into clear, everyday guidance for readers of The Independent. Her coverage focuses on how common conditions, habits and technologies affect people’s bodies and minds across different life stages, and what simple changes make a difference. She works in a service-driven format, using expert perspectives and practical tips to connect abstract health risks to daily routines, workplaces and family life. Alongside her work for The Independent, she produces lifestyle and health pieces for a national news agency, contributing daily news-reactive features on health, wellbeing and personal life.
Health risks in everyday life
Foster’s reporting often starts from a familiar symptom or trend and traces it through to serious health and economic consequences. In her coverage of a common sleep condition that raises stroke risk and costs workplaces billions, she links disrupted sleep not only to cardiovascular danger but also to absenteeism and productivity loss, framing it as a concern for both individuals and employers. She brings the same lens to physical health trends such as fibremaxxing, explaining how changes in diet relate to gut health and longer-term wellbeing rather than treating them as passing fads. When she examines why hot weather makes people feel angry and how to keep their cool, she treats heat-related mood changes as a public health issue, connecting physiology, behaviour and practical coping strategies. Across these pieces, she distinguishes herself by treating everyday discomforts and lifestyle trends as entry points to serious, evidence-backed health risks.
Habits, mood and mental health
A significant strand of Foster’s work looks at mood, motivation and mental health through the lens of small, sustainable habits. In her article on January joy rather than blues, she focuses on avoiding a new year slump by offering expert-backed tips for resetting routines after the holidays instead of leaning on cliché resolutions. Her guide to easy healthy habits to start right now and keep all year emphasises achievable changes in sleep, movement and diet that support energy and resilience over time. Around Mental Health Awareness Week she writes about small, manageable habits to boost mood, highlighting actions such as time in nature, regular physical activity and deliberate breaks from screens as realistic tools rather than grand overhauls. This pattern of work marks her out as a health reporter who centres incremental behavioural change and emotional wellbeing, giving readers concrete steps tied to psychological insight.
Families, age and digital life
Foster frequently frames health issues in the context of family roles and different generations. Her piece on making sure an elderly relative or friend is taking care of themselves in winter looks at reduced mobility, memory lapses and reluctance to seek help, and positions these signs as cues for families to intervene constructively. In her coverage of why teenagers can experience withdrawals from social media when it is restricted or banned, she speaks to both young people and parents, exploring how digital habits intersect with mood regulation, social connection and anxiety. Other work in the Health & Families section keeps this multi-generational view, treating children, teenagers, working-age adults and older people as linked by shared environments and responsibilities. This focus on carers, parents and relatives, alongside the people directly experiencing symptoms, defines her approach to health reporting within family life.
Service features and recommendations
Across her portfolio Foster uses a service feature format that prioritises clarity and usefulness. She writes list-based pieces such as “Five ways to…” guides under the Money vertical, translating health and lifestyle choices into financial and practical impacts. Her recommendations for new podcasts to listen to include health, wellbeing and finance shows, curating listening that supports informed decisions and self-care. Even in more explanatory articles, she structures her work around straightforward questions – what a trend is, why a symptom matters, how to respond – and answers them with expert input and accessible language. Her dual role producing daily lifestyle features for a news agency reinforces this style: she reacts to current developments, awareness campaigns and seasonal shifts with pieces that can be acted on immediately. The consistency of this service-led, explanatory format is what most clearly distinguishes her coverage from more general health news reporting.
4 more health journalists.
Alex Storey
Alex Storey is a journalist at LBC whose work is driven by specific cases that test professional conduct and accountability in health and the public sector. He covers health as his main beat, focusing on the point where individual decisions by clinicians or officials meet public trust in institutions. His reporting is incident-first and case-led, using concrete episodes to show how rules, ethics and policy work in real life. Recent pieces include a disciplinary case where a nurse was struck off after linking a patient’s cancer to Covid jabs, and coverage of civil servants being “paid to play Grand Theft Auto” as “lived experience” training. Across these stories, he examines how professionals, regulators and officials explain their decisions, and what that reveals about trust, responsibility and the standards expected of people in positions of authority.
Alexandra Thompson
Alexandra Thompson is an assistant news editor focused on health who treats health claims as hypotheses to be tested rather than messages to be repeated. She works at New Scientist, combining editing with frontline reporting on ageing brains, cognitive health, chronic illness, contested treatments and infectious disease. Her beat centres on how neuroscience and psychology intersect with everyday health choices and on how scientific findings translate into real-world outcomes for people living with illness. She examines lifestyle advice, rehabilitation programmes and outbreak guidance against current evidence, clarifying risk without overstating it and giving space to controversy without sensationalising it. Alongside written news she appears in audio and video formats, bringing the same clear, news-driven approach to live discussions and helping shape the daily health agenda while keeping a tight focus on evidence and impact.
Alice Wilkinson
Alice Wilkinson investigates how everyday habits, products and routines shape sleep and long-term wellbeing, using test-driven health features to separate hype from real benefit. She holds a senior role on The Telegraph’s health features team, writing and shaping consumer-focused coverage that blends personal trial with clear expert evidence. Her core beat is sleep as a practical, solvable part of daily life, from detailed comparisons of magnesium supplements to service pieces on how sleeping position affects health over time. She treats supplements as a crowded, over-claimed market that demands careful testing and clear-eyed reporting. Alongside long-form features she writes weekly health desk dispatches on sleep, stress and concentration. Across her work she combines substantial self-testing, specialist insight and plain, unfussy prose to give readers measurable, realistic changes they can make.
Ally Head
Ally Head connects performance-focused fitness reporting with women’s health, sustainability and relationships, using her own endurance training and health history to stress-test trends against expert guidance. She is Senior Health, Sustainability and Relationships Editor at Marie Claire UK, where she shapes the health agenda across training, wellbeing and conscious living and writes and commissions news, topical features and SEO-led long-form pieces. A ten-time marathoner and Boston-qualifying runner, she focuses on structured, realistic training plans, strength and conditioning for women who run, and performance longevity. Her women’s health work centres on hormones, chronic conditions and fact versus fiction wellness claims. She also covers sustainability as conscious living and relationships, mental resilience and lifestyle features, favouring plain language, lived experience, specialist commentary and clear, repeatable routines. She has previously produced similar content for Women’s Health, Stylist, Glamour and Grazia.