Donna Shryer
Donna Shryer reports on health and wellness with a consistent focus on turning complex medical and care-system issues into straightforward guidance for everyday decisions. Her work spans consumer health features for Chicago Health and coverage of senior care and long-term care for McKnight’s publications, alongside assignments for national health organizations. She is the author of two books on nutrition and brings a research-heavy, detail-oriented approach to both service pieces and industry-focused reports.
Supplement Safety and Everyday Health Decisions
Shryer often uses supplements as a lens on how people navigate self-care, risk and medical advice. In her work on what to know before adding supplements to a routine, she breaks down label claims, daily values and certification marks so that readers can distinguish between marketing and evidence-based guidance.
She highlights practical checks such as understanding dosage relative to recommended daily values and looking for independent verification seals, framing each step as a way to reduce avoidable harm. Her coverage stresses the importance of telling physicians and pharmacists about every supplement being taken, reinforcing coordination with formal care rather than treating supplements as separate from medical care.
The tone across these pieces is direct and instructional, built around concrete behaviors rather than abstract wellness language.
Stress, Lifestyle Habits and Preventive Care
At Chicago Health, Shryer writes lifestyle health features that connect everyday habits with preventive care and long-term outcomes. In seasonal pieces on Halloween candy and dental health, she links sugar-heavy treats to cavity risk and focuses on manageable countermeasures such as limiting certain candies and brushing more often.
Her stress-tagged work addresses summer pressures and the way expectations around “making the most” of the season can erode perspective and harm health. She pairs these themes with plain guidance on reframing routines, dialing down stressors and preserving mental and physical health across the year.
The reporting format is feature-driven, built around a central health concern and then structured as a reality check that moves readers toward practical, preventive steps.
Aging, Long-Term Care and the Care Workforce
Shryer’s reporting for McKnight’s Senior Living and related brands looks closely at how aging adults access care and who provides it. In coverage of middle-class retirees’ plans for future care, she documents that a majority expect to rely on family and friends if their health declines, highlighting the tension between financial limits and care needs.
Her workforce guide for the long-term care sector describes the field as being at a pivotal crossroads, with an unprecedented need for workers colliding with shrinking labor pools, especially in rural areas. She writes about staffing shortages, supply constraints and the operational consequences for senior living communities and home-based services, treating workforce dynamics as a core determinant of care quality.
Across these reports, she combines data points and expert commentary with clear language about who bears the burden when formal systems fall short - retirees, families and frontline staff.
Integrative Therapies and Chronic Conditions
Shryer also covers integrative and alternative therapies in the context of serious chronic illnesses.
In her work on acupuncture for multiple sclerosis, she explains potential symptom relief alongside the limits of current evidence and the need to consult neurologically experienced practitioners. She describes how individuals weigh personal experiences, risks and costs, and she flags uncertainties around associated herbal treatments that lack robust study in MS. The reporting blends patient narratives with clinical perspectives, giving equal space to subjective benefit and formal evidence so that readers can situate integrative therapies within a broader plan of care.
This thread aligns with her broader health beat: complex interventions are unpacked into accessible, balanced narratives that emphasize informed decision-making over advocacy for any single treatment path.
4 more health journalists.
Aislinn Antrim
Aislinn Antrim is an associate editorial director at Pharmacy Times and a journalist who connects clinical advances, regulation, and the changing role of pharmacists. She writes pharmacy-centered health coverage on chronic disease therapeutics, specialty and oncology care, workforce pressures, and advocacy. Her reporting explains FDA actions, policy shifts, drug pipelines, and the real-world effects of new evidence on patient care and pharmacy practice. She often uses interviews and expert conversations to show how pharmacists improve adherence, manage side effects, navigate access and benefits, and coordinate care with prescribers. She also covers burnout, staffing strain, and the future of pharmacy practice, with an eye on how policy and economics shape work at the dispenser.
Alex Cabrero
Alex Cabrero is an Emmy award-winning KSL TV reporter who covers where health, safety and community life meet, always focused on how decisions and events affect everyday people. He has been with KSL since 2004, bringing long experience in breaking news, public service coverage and human-centered features. His beat includes public health, emergency response, technology, local infrastructure, environment and science, framed through community well-being and resilience. He reports on issues like mental health initiatives, law enforcement staffing, environmental hazards, rescues, wildfire detection tools, land-use fights and scientific discoveries, making technical and policy details clear for a general audience. He also produces many positive, everyday-life features on families, veterans, farmers, sports and local traditions. His style is direct and conversational, often built around a central person or family whose experience carries the story across TV, digital and social platforms.
Alexandra Frost
Alexandra Frost is a freelance journalist and content marketing writer who turns expert-backed health and family guidance into clear, practical service stories. She covers consumer health, wellness, nutrition, preventive care, medical research, parenting, kids’ mental health, education, products, and lifestyle. Her reporting explains concerns such as inflammation, urinary symptoms, fiber, lung cancer screening, pain treatment, mobility, family dynamics, children’s technology use, and school readiness. She profiles clinicians and scientists, connects research to everyday decisions, and focuses on what readers should watch for, ask, or change. Frost currently writes across multiple outlets, including Good Housekeeping, Cincinnati Magazine, Wirecutter, Popular Science, Success, Healthline, Parents, Women’s Health, Reader’s Digest, Today’s Parent, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, TIME, Consumer Reports, Business Insider, and National Geographic. She also works as a freelance editor, media consultant, and content strategist.
Alexandra Pattillo
Alexandra Pattillo is a freelance journalist who pairs rigorous health and science reporting with intimate accounts of patients’ lives. She covers health, science and wellness for the BBC and other major outlets, including National Geographic, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Outside, CNN and Inverse. Her beat includes eating disorders, women’s health, perinatal mental health, brain health, youth sports, concussion, long-term Covid symptoms, attention, habits and behavioral science. She reports on emerging treatments such as psychedelic-assisted therapy for anorexia, testing evidence, safety and relapse risk. She explains complex research in plain language and examines how it shapes everyday choices. Her reporting uses in-depth interviews with patients, families, clinicians, researchers and coaches. Through the BBC’s Health Gap column, she also covers stigma, unequal access to care and gaps between lived experience and standard medical pathways.