Kerry Benefield
Kerry Benefield is a columnist and senior reporter for The Press Democrat who uses individual stories to show how health, safety and community systems affect people’s lives. Her work sits at the intersection of public health, personal experience and local institutions, translating policy and data into concrete narratives about what they mean day to day. She has been with the newsroom since 2003 and brings long familiarity with the region’s politics and breaking news to her current focus on lived impacts of health and social issues.
Health, aging and isolation
Benefield gives sustained attention to how health and aging play out in local communities, with a focus on isolation, access to care and the systems that are meant to help.
In her coverage of senior isolation, she follows programs built to respond to “alarming” levels of loneliness among older adults and treats isolation as a health issue as much as a social one. She connects the services on offer to the everyday realities of older residents, showing how outreach, transportation and social programming can either bridge or widen gaps for seniors.
That same concern with lived health risks runs through her work on cardiac arrest, where she explains the condition in plain language and shows how bystander CPR determines whether a medical crisis becomes a fatal event. She writes about cardiac arrest as both a medical “electrical issue” and a community responsibility, emphasizing the role of friends and passersby who acted quickly.
Her health reporting often turns on a single person’s story to illuminate larger questions about rights and access. In a column about a barely legal abortion in 1972, she reconstructs the experience of an 18-year-old who terminated a pregnancy in the year before Roe v. Wade, using that narrative to anchor contemporary debates about reproductive health and legal protections.
Across these pieces she favors detailed, scene-driven accounts over abstract argument, keeping the focus on what policy decisions mean for the people who live with their consequences.
Schools, safety and mental health support
Benefield also covers how schools handle safety threats and the emotional fallout that follows. In her reporting on school safety, she tracks decisions by officials to cancel classes after a traumatic incident while still opening campuses to serve food and provide mental health support. She pays close attention to the practical balance between physical security, continuity of care and the need for spaces where students and staff can gather.
Her coverage notes the emergence of memorials and other rituals on campus, treating them as part of the institutional response rather than background detail.
Within this sub-beat, she treats mental health as inseparable from safety planning. She shows how counseling, community meals and open campuses function as recovery tools alongside more visible security measures.
The work reflects a consistent interest in the support structures available to young people after crisis, and in whether those structures match the promises made when schools talk about safety.
Human-centered local columns
Beyond explicit health and safety topics, Benefield’s columns trace the human stories behind local institutions and everyday places.
In one piece, she follows a mystery donation to a nonprofit thrift store, revealing that what first looked like an ordinary item was in fact a historic gem. She uses the chain of discovery to show how community spaces accumulate unexpected cultural value and how workers and volunteers become caretakers of that history.
Her public bio describes her as a local columnist “on the hunt for the brightest, most beautiful, weirdest and wildest stories,” and her recent work reflects that range, moving from feature storytelling to hard-edged topics like medical emergencies and reproductive rights while keeping the same close focus on people at the center.
Across beats, her reporting style is consistent: she embeds policy and expert explanation inside narratives that are accessible and concrete. She writes in a reported-column format, combining interviews, scene-setting and clear exposition, and she remains attentive to what institutions do and fail to do for the individuals they serve.
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.