Julia Banim
Julia Banim is a features writer at The Mirror who covers health-led human interest stories, using individual cases to show how illness, care and policy decisions play out in real lives. Her work sits where healthcare meets everyday experience, focusing on patients, families and front-line staff rather than abstract statistics. She has been with the paper since 2022 and previously worked as a journalist in digital media.
Health-led human interest reporting
Banim’s core style is narrative features built around a single patient or family, then widened out to questions of responsibility, support and reform. In coverage of the Lucy Letby case, she follows NHS whistleblowers who raised alarms about infant deaths and now live with the consequences, capturing both their professional duty and personal strain. When writing about a teen left quadriplegic after medical complications, she focuses on the young person’s voice, their final words and the long aftermath for those close to them.
Her piece on a baby boy found garrotted and wrapped in newspaper reconstructs the events through witnesses and investigators, showing how unresolved trauma and unanswered questions linger around historic cases. Across these stories she keeps clinical detail clear but secondary to the people affected, making complex situations accessible without losing nuance.
Child health, parenting and prevention
A recurring strand in Banim’s work is child health, particularly where parental decisions and wider systems intersect. She has reported on a mother whose baby contracted measles at eight months, using the case to scrutinise the risks created when people reject vaccination and how quickly preventable disease can spread through families and communities. Her parenting and nutrition coverage includes pieces on home-made baby food pouches and expert guidance on ensuring infants get vital nutrients after an investigation into commercial baby foods, combining practical advice with clear concern about long-term health impacts.
In a feature on an eight-year-old urgently seeking medical treatment in the UK, she shows how cross-border healthcare, fundraising and campaigning become part of a family’s effort to secure life-saving care. She also covers tragic incidents involving children, such as a one-year-old killed by a charging giraffe and a mother left paralysed, moving from the immediate shock to questions about safety, recovery and support.
Taken together, these pieces show an interest in how parents navigate risk, information and trust in medical advice.
Healthcare systems, fertility and ageing
Banim regularly uses individual stories to explore how healthcare systems work or fail in practice. Her reporting on the Lucy Letby retrial focuses not only on the crimes but on the institutional processes that allowed concerns to go unheard, highlighting the emotional and professional toll on staff who tried to raise the alarm.
In coverage of new Covid variants such as the ‘Stratus’ strain, she draws on expert commentary to explain symptoms, duration and transmission in clear language, positioning readers to make informed decisions about precautions.
Away from acute crises, she has written about a fertility clinic’s work helping people start families, detailing the procedures, emotional investment and staff expertise behind successful treatment. She also looks at ageing and income, as in a feature on a 92-year-old struggling to make ends meet yet backing changes to the pensions triple lock, using one pensioner’s experience to examine how policy shifts affect everyday life and dignity in old age. These stories connect access, affordability and outcomes, showing healthcare and social support as part of the same landscape.
Broader social, lifestyle and culture coverage
Although health is a consistent thread, Banim’s brief extends across social issues, lifestyle and entertainment.
Her author bio describes a focus on gripping human interest stories alongside celebrity and TV coverage, as well as pieces on housing, food, relationships and emerging lifestyle trends. Listings of her work also show lighter features and audience-driven content, indicating that she can switch between serious health and social care topics and more upbeat coverage without losing clarity of voice.
This breadth gives her scope to place health stories within wider cultural conversations, whether that is how people consume media about true crime, how they respond to public investigations, or how everyday habits like eating and exercising are shaped by economic and social pressures.
4 more health journalists.
Alan Booth
Alan Booth is distinctive for linking infectious disease, laboratory research and emerging health technologies rather than treating them as separate beats. He is a senior editor at Labmate-Online, where he covers outbreaks, vaccines, drug development, antimicrobial resistance, gene therapies and laboratory innovation. His reporting has examined tuberculosis, measles, cholera, influenza and malaria, including a major tuberculosis outbreak, vaccine and drug advances, and a malaria vaccine designed to block mosquito transmission. He has also written about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, new gene therapy centres and SinS Brighton 2025. Booth reports news, research updates, interviews and event coverage for a broad laboratory audience. He presents LabMatePod, discussing AMR, emerging pathogens, public health responses and scientific history. Across articles, interviews and podcasts, he connects laboratory findings with health policy and technology using clear, well-researched science communication.
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.