Kellie O
Kellie O'Brien is a feature-driven health and culture journalist for Region Illawarra who uses personal stories to connect local wellbeing, creativity and history. She brings more than 18 years of newspaper journalism experience to the masthead and continues to work as an online marketing and business storytelling consultant, author and speaker. Her reporting stands out for the way it follows individual doctors, authors, artists and archivists, showing how their work shapes everyday life rather than treating health, art or heritage as abstract topics.
Health stories rooted in prevention and everyday life
Kellie O'Brien's health coverage focuses on how medical professionals are trying to stop illness before it starts, rather than only treating it once it appears. In her feature on a Wollongong doctor who spent years treating illness and now wants to prevent it, she frames the story around the practitioner's shift in mindset and the implications for patients' day-to-day lives. She treats prevention as a human story, not just a clinical one, using the doctor's journey to explore how healthcare is changing at the local level.
Her approach to the health beat is shaped by a long background in feature writing, entertainment and news reporting in newspapers and radio. She prefers narrative structure and detailed interviews over quick updates, giving space to explain why a change in practice matters and how it fits into broader ideas about wellbeing. This feature style allows her to integrate health with lifestyle, community and personal history, making complex medical shifts understandable through one person's experience.
Authors, books and the local literary scene
A recurring strand in Kellie O'Brien's work is her attention to authors and the stories behind their books. She profiles bestselling romance writer Alyssa J Montgomery ahead of a workshop on "Writing Romance," highlighting both the craft of genre writing and the opportunity for local writers to learn directly from an established author. In another piece, she follows a Wollongong author who turns hidden family history into a novel described as "a darn good yarn," drawing out how personal archives and family stories become published fiction. She has also written about an author who chronicles Australia's food history, explaining how research and long-term historical work can be distilled into an accessible book on what the country eats.
Her coverage is reinforced by her interviews around new and upcoming titles. She is credited for interviewing the author of The Woman in the Seal Skin in the lead-up to a major appearance, using conversation to introduce readers to the themes and context of the work. Gwen Wilson publicly thanks her for a warm interview and "fabulous write-up" on a debut historical novel, underscoring her interest in first-time authors and the care she takes with their stories. Across these pieces, she treats books as extensions of lived experience—family histories, research careers, or creative practice—rather than as standalone products.
Art, music and cultural memory
Beyond health and books, Kellie O'Brien frequently reports on art, performance and the ways communities remember themselves. She writes about a man archiving Wollongong's live music for future generations, introducing the Wollongong Music Archive and its role in preserving performances that would otherwise disappear. Her coverage emphasises the archivist's dedication and the idea that local gigs form part of a cultural record, not just entertainment.
In a feature on Australia's most iconic photograph, Max Dupain's Sunbaker, she explores an exhibition that reimagines the image to ask "What might this image dream of?". She explains how artist Patrick Pound brings together found items and other images to create new associations around a familiar work, showing readers how curators and artists add layers to national symbols. She also covers a "living archive" that preserves memories of "ordinary people" who served in the Great War, describing a collection that now holds more than 2000 records of stories, names and memorials. These pieces share an interest in how objects, recordings and documents carry community memory forward.
Her reporting on blue plaques for landscape designer Paul Sorensen and Oscar-winning costume designer Orry-Kelly continues this focus on cultural recognition and design heritage. She explains how commemorative plaques honour creative work in architecture and costume design, tying individual careers to a wider sense of place and history. Together, these stories mark her out as a journalist who uses art and music coverage to trace the threads of identity and remembrance.
History, heritage and a changing city
Kellie O'Brien often uses historical stories to illuminate how industry, politics and everyday life have changed over time. In her piece on Francis Snow being prosecuted for "trading with the enemy" at Port Kembla's Electrolytic Refining and Smelting Company of Australia, she revisits a case from the early days of an industry that helped transform the region, blending legal history with industrial development. She situates this episode in the broader story of how large workplaces and wartime regulation shaped local communities.
Her interest in heritage is visible again when she reports on nightlife, writing an opinion piece titled "A night out in Wollongong ain't what it used to be, it's better," which reflects on how going out has evolved. This shows she does not only look backward; she also examines contemporary changes in social life, using the lens of entertainment and city culture. Her ability to move between historical investigation, cultural reporting and commentary on current habits gives her work range while keeping a clear focus on people and places.
Underlying all of these strands is a feature journalist who spent 16 years in newspapers and radio specialising in feature articles, entertainment and news. She now combines that experience with her ongoing work in online marketing and business storytelling, which informs her emphasis on narrative structure and clear, accessible language. Across health, books, art, archives and city life, Kellie O'Brien's coverage is distinguished by its commitment to deeply reported human stories that connect personal experience with broader cultural and historical forces.
4 more health journalists.
Abida Tasnim
Abida Tasnim is a health writer for The Daily Star who focuses on clear, practical guidance that helps readers recognise risks early and act before everyday illnesses turn into wider public health problems. She reports on infectious disease prevention, using measles coverage to show how outbreaks start with individual decisions and behaviours, not just hospital statistics. Her work explains what happens during an outbreak and then anchors the story in simple steps people can take, such as avoiding crowded places when symptoms appear, practising good hygiene, and seeking medical advice early. She writes direct, action‑oriented health explainers that turn clinical questions about contagion and disease burden into everyday choices. Across her beat, she stresses early recognition, timely care, and prevention as the foundations of healthier communities.
Adrián Carballo Casla
Adrián Carballo Casla stands out for turning complex cohort data on ageing into clear, food‑level advice on what older adults should eat to protect brain health and slow chronic disease. He is a researcher in nutritional epidemiology focused on ageing and chronic disease prevention and a postdoctoral researcher in geriatric epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet, writing health explainers for The Conversation. He reports on how diet quality, especially Mediterranean and Mind‑style patterns, shapes dementia risk, grey matter loss and neurocognitive ageing, and how healthy versus pro‑inflammatory diets alter multimorbidity trajectories. His articles translate findings on flavonoids, polyphenols, folate, omega‑3 fats and dietary nitrates into specific food choices and small, practical changes. Much of his coverage is anchored in his own studies on multimorbidity, high‑risk older adults and tailored dietary recommendations, often syndicated to other outlets.
Ahmed Elbediwy
Ahmed Elbediwy brings a lab-based understanding of cancer biology and clinical biochemistry to public-facing health reporting, linking drug mechanisms and molecular pathways to everyday choices about medicines and products. He writes for The Conversation on weight-loss injections, cancer overdiagnosis and anti-ageing supplements, focusing on obesity medicine, cancer signalling, screening trade-offs, skincare and supplement science. His pieces on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro explain why some people do not respond, how gut hormones and appetite signals work, and where psychological support and nutrition fit alongside prescriptions. He co-authors explainers on cancer risk and overdiagnosis and on whether supplements can reverse ageing, separating established knowledge from emerging research. An award-winning senior lecturer at Kingston University, he favours clear, structured explainers, careful definition of key terms and evidence-based appraisal over hype.
Amanda Sheppeard
Amanda Sheppeard is a managing editor and health journalist known for long, detailed explainers that connect complex clinical research, disability policy and political narratives with the daily realities of doctors and patients. She works at The Medical Republic across editorial leadership and commercial content while reporting widely on medicine for its specialist titles. Her real beat spans autism, disability policy, autoimmune disease, infectious threats and system pressures in primary care and hospitals. She covers subjects such as autism diagnosis and the NDIS, rheumatology’s clinical shifts, weight-loss agents in rheumatoid arthritis, infection control, antimicrobial resistance and new modalities like CAR T-cell therapy and microneedles. She reports by doing the synthesis inside the story, linking trial design, molecular targets, funding rules and policy changes to concrete decisions and workflows in clinics and hospitals.