Niamh Kirk
Niamh Kirk is a lifestyle and features journalist at the Mirror who uses real-life stories to report on health-led and female-focused issues for a wide readership. Her work combines individual experiences with expert voices and data, often turning complex medical or social questions into clear, accessible narratives. She joined the Mirror in 2023 and has since built a patch that spans health, relationships, injustices and empowerment.
Real-life health and social features
Kirk’s core specialism is real-life features that put health and social issues at the centre of the narrative. Professional bios describe her focus as “real-life and gripping stories” with a highlight on female-led, health and social issues, as well as quirky and unusual cases. She actively invites strong real-life pitches for the Mirror across health, relationships, injustices and empowerment, signalling a remit that goes beyond narrow health news into the everyday impact of illness, care and inequality. In practice, this includes pieces that frame medical advice through the lens of ordinary people at risk, such as reported guidance from doctors to younger adults about changing lifestyle habits in response to rising rates of serious conditions like heart attacks.
Women’s health, fertility and choice
Women’s health and reproductive decision-making run through her recent work. She has written about policies in which 29-year-olds in France receive government letters detailing fertility information and options for egg freezing, using the story to examine how official messaging shapes women’s choices. In that coverage, she explains that the letters provide scientific information on fertility and egg freezing and highlight that women can choose to freeze their eggs, framing the issue as both a medical and social question. This focus on female-led health stories aligns with her stated emphasis on women’s experiences and health concerns in her wider feature output.
Safety campaigns around cosmetic treatments
Kirk also works on safety and regulation in the aesthetics and cosmetic treatment industry. She has fronted a campaign for the Mirror in collaboration with a medical expert to push for stronger regulation of the aesthetics sector. In that project she positions cosmetic procedures as a public health issue, not just a lifestyle trend, emphasising the need for clearer standards and safeguards for people considering treatments. This campaigning strand shows her willingness to move beyond reporting isolated cases towards sustained coverage aimed at regulatory and industry change.
Relationships, injustices and empowerment
Alongside health, Kirk’s brief includes relationship stories, experiences of injustice and narratives of personal empowerment. She publicly highlights these as key areas where she looks for “strong real-life feature pitches,” placing them on the same footing as health in her day-to-day work. The combination means she often treats health in context—alongside family dynamics, financial strain, stigma or institutional failures—rather than as a standalone medical topic. Her background includes experience as a reporter at a news agency before joining the Mirror, which underpins her ability to turn individual cases into broader, newsworthy features. Overall, she brings a consistent emphasis on lived experience, female perspectives and tangible consequences when she covers health and related social issues.
4 more health journalists.
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.
Ally Head
Ally Head connects performance-focused fitness reporting with women’s health, sustainability and relationships, using her own endurance training and health history to stress-test trends against expert guidance. She is Senior Health, Sustainability and Relationships Editor at Marie Claire UK, where she shapes the health agenda across training, wellbeing and conscious living and writes and commissions news, topical features and SEO-led long-form pieces. A ten-time marathoner and Boston-qualifying runner, she focuses on structured, realistic training plans, strength and conditioning for women who run, and performance longevity. Her women’s health work centres on hormones, chronic conditions and fact versus fiction wellness claims. She also covers sustainability as conscious living and relationships, mental resilience and lifestyle features, favouring plain language, lived experience, specialist commentary and clear, repeatable routines. She has previously produced similar content for Women’s Health, Stylist, Glamour and Grazia.