Lily Alvino
Lily Alvino reports on how new health research and emerging threats translate into real-world risks and inequities, with a focus on making complex medical findings clear and practical for a broad audience. She is an intern in the Health and Medical Unit at NBC News, where she covers topics ranging from cancer outcomes to infectious disease, extreme heat, and health misinformation. Her stories typically originate in fresh data or major medical reports and move quickly to what they mean for patients, families, and frontline clinicians.
Cancer trends and disparities
Alvino’s coverage of cancer zeroes in on the tension between long-term progress and persistent inequality in outcomes. In her reporting on a major American Association for Cancer Research report, she explains that U.S. cancer mortality has fallen by 35% over 35 years, translating into nearly 5 million fewer deaths since 1991. She sets those headline numbers within a wider picture of access to screening and advances in treatment, showing how improvements in technology and early detection drive national trends while still leaving gaps for certain groups.
Within that same piece, she foregrounds the idea that overall gains can obscure clear disparities, emphasizing that the decline in deaths is not evenly shared across different communities. Her framing keeps the statistical achievements intact but repeatedly returns to who benefits and who is left behind, reflecting a sustained interest in health equity rather than just aggregate progress. The story is structured as an evidence-led explainer: she walks readers through key figures from the report, then connects them to on-the-ground realities and implications for people navigating cancer risk and care.
Health misinformation and social media
A significant strand of Alvino’s work looks at how health information circulates on social platforms, and how misinformation can undercut sound medical advice. In her piece on sunscreen content on TikTok, she reports on a study of nearly 1,000 videos and notes that most posts do promote sunscreen use, yet the clips that go viral often contain misleading or false claims. She details the kinds of misinformation researchers found, including assertions that sunscreen is dangerous, disrupts hormones, causes cancer, contaminates breast milk, or contains harmful microplastics.
Alvino uses expert voices to anchor this coverage, quoting the study’s lead author and dermatologists who spend time in clinic correcting misconceptions that originate online. She highlights the researchers’ conclusion that there is no scientific evidence that common ingredients in chemical sunscreens pose health risks, underscoring the gap between data and the narratives that gain traction on TikTok. The article combines platform analysis, scientific findings, and clinical perspective to show how viral content can shape everyday decisions about sun protection, even when the most engaging messages are the least accurate.
Emerging infectious threats in health care
Alvino also covers infectious disease, with an emphasis on hard-to-treat pathogens that challenge health systems. In her reporting on a deadly, drug-resistant fungus, she explains that this nearly untreatable organism continues to pose severe threats to health care facilities across the United States. The story highlights the fungus’s resistance to many existing medications and frames it as a pressing concern for hospitals and other care settings that must prevent outbreaks among vulnerable patients.
Here again, she leans on new government data to show how the threat is evolving, using the study to quantify both the spread of the pathogen and the limits of current treatment options. The piece situates the fungus within broader conversations about antimicrobial resistance, infection control, and the strain emerging diseases place on already taxed health systems. Her reporting style stays close to the evidence while spelling out operational and clinical consequences, making the story useful for anyone tracking health-care safety and preparedness.
Extreme heat and everyday health risks
Another focus of her coverage is the health impact of extreme weather, particularly dangerous heat events. In her article on an impending heat dome over the Midwest and much of the East Coast, she notes forecasts of temperatures at or above 100 degrees and treats the event as a direct public health concern rather than just a weather story. She structures the piece around practical guidance on how to stay safe, drawing on the perspective of an emergency room doctor who describes what severe heat does to the body and how quickly conditions can escalate.
Alvino uses that expert testimony to spell out specific behaviors that reduce the risk of heat-related illness, connecting meteorological concepts like “heat dome” to concrete advice for people spending time outdoors or living in less protected environments. The emphasis is on prevention and readiness, translating clinical insight into simple steps that can be taken before and during a heat wave. The result is a health explainer that treats climate and weather as drivers of medical risk and situates extreme heat alongside more traditional public health threats.
Evidence-led health explainers
Across these topics, Alvino favors an evidence-led format that combines fresh studies, official reports, and expert interviews. She writes in a straightforward, accessible style, using statistics and technical findings to frame stories but quickly moving to what they mean for everyday decisions about care, prevention, and risk. Her work regularly highlights inequities, whether in cancer outcomes, exposure to infectious disease, or the uneven impact of extreme heat. Several of her health stories are also carried by other national news platforms that syndicate NBC News reporting, extending the reach of her coverage on cancer disparities and sunscreen misinformation beyond the original site.
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.