Melissa Cunningham

Melissa Cunningham reports on how health systems, medicine and regulation intersect with real-world harm, drawing on years of pandemic coverage and a background in crime and justice reporting. She is a multi-award-winning health reporter at The Age with more than a decade of experience in online and print journalism. Her work focuses on exclusive medical and public health stories, especially where emerging treatments, policy gaps and vulnerable people collide.

Health risks and unregulated treatments

Cunningham’s recent health reporting includes detailed investigations into the dangers of black market peptides used for weight loss, muscle gain and cosmetic benefits. In one feature she traces how people sourcing “backyard” peptides end up in emergency departments with severe vomiting, abdominal pain and chest symptoms that resemble heart attacks, and in some cases suffer deep skin infections that require skin grafts or even amputations. She explains medical conditions such as compartment syndrome and describes how contaminated products and unsafe injection practices escalate routine self-treatment into limb-threatening emergencies. Her coverage sets individual patients’ stories alongside clinical perspectives and regulatory responses, highlighting warnings from authorities about unapproved peptide products that are promoted through social media and online clinics. Across this work, Cunningham frames peptide use as part of a wider grey market in health, balancing the appeal of rapid results against the documented toll on hospitals and the people who present there.

Pandemic and public health reporting

Cunningham has covered the coronavirus pandemic for more than three years as a senior health reporter at The Age, building a sustained body of work on infectious disease, public health policy and the pressures on health services. Her role includes deep dives into exclusive medical and public health news, which has seen her focus on how decisions by health authorities affect clinicians and patients on the ground. She has co-authored a book on Australia’s pandemic, extending her reporting into long-form narrative that traces how the crisis unfolded and how institutions, communities and families responded. This background gives her current health coverage a strong systems view: she is attuned to the way clinical practice, regulation and politics shape outcomes, and she uses that lens when examining newer issues such as the rise of unregulated therapies and the strain they place on emergency care.

Crime and justice reporting

Before returning to the health round, Cunningham covered crime and justice for The Age, reporting on court cases, violent offending and institutional accountability. Her archive includes stories on the alleged murder of a doctor and the home invasions that preceded his death, gang violence involving teenagers already on bail, and homophobic attacks in which groups of young men used fake dating profiles to lure victims to parks for assault. She has written about long stalking campaigns, including a three-year case where an offender amassed hundreds of photos and videos of a woman met in a café, and about bikies who stalked and shot a man near his home in a crime described by a judge as “outrageous and brutally violent”. Cunningham also reported on domestic violence and governance issues at an exclusive men-only club, covering how revelations about a member’s history of abuse prompted internal ructions and broader concern among campaigners. In these pieces she combines detailed court reporting with an emphasis on the experiences of victims and the implications for systems such as bail, secure accommodation and elite institutions.

Reporting style and formats

Cunningham’s work often runs as exclusives, whether she is breaking new ground on health risks or documenting the fallout from serious crime. She favours narrative features that follow individual cases in depth, using patients, survivors, clinicians and officials to illustrate larger trends in public health and justice. Her pandemic reporting and subsequent health coverage show a consistent focus on clarity around complex medical topics, while her crime stories demonstrate comfort with legal detail and courtroom dynamics. Across beats, she writes with a strong sense of consequence, returning repeatedly to how policy, regulation and institutional culture translate into lived outcomes for the people at the centre of her stories.