Nick Longworth
Nick Longworth covers the intersection of health policy, insurance, and public health for FOX 9, with a focus on how complex decisions translate into practical consequences for patients and families. He connects regulatory changes, legal disputes, and scientific advances to the dollar amounts, coverage rules, and risks that shape everyday care. His coverage ranges from health insurance markets and Medicaid programs to environmental exposures, medical research, and emerging laws around technology and mental health. He also reports on local health-related ordinances, including policy debates around bathhouse regulation.
Health insurance, Medicaid and coverage disruptions
Longworth devotes sustained attention to how insurance rate filings and plan changes affect people who buy their own coverage or rely on public programs.
He explains proposed 2027 health insurance rates for individual and small-group buyers, breaking out ranges of projected increases and key enrollment dates so that consumers can see how policy decisions translate into higher premiums and deadlines they must meet. He tracks insurer exits and restructurings, detailing how UCare’s decision to wind down operations, its reported losses, and the transfer of remaining plans to Medica will ripple through hundreds of thousands of Medicaid and MNsure enrollees and workers facing layoffs.
In Medicare, he follows changes to Medicare Advantage, outlining how UnitedHealth’s reduction in coverage counties and UCare’s withdrawal from the product could leave thousands of subscribers searching for new plans and using official tools to compare options. He also reports on Minnesota Medicaid provider disenrollment, quantifying that 61% of providers left the program and explaining what that means for families suddenly scrambling to find care. Across these pieces, he uses clear figures, timeframes, and plan names to show exactly who is affected, how many people are involved, and what steps they will have to take next.
Hospitals, health systems and academic medicine
Another strand of his work follows large health systems and academic medicine, focusing on how institutional deals reshape care and training. He covers the long-negotiated 10-year agreement between the University of Minnesota and Fairview Health Services, summarising key investment commitments such as Fairview’s pledge to put $1 billion into the medical center and provide $50 million annually to the medical school.
He notes that the agreement still requires approval from the Board of Regents and explains how its start date would align with broader changes in health care programs. In related coverage, he highlights new donor care facilities opened by health systems, tying bricks-and-mortar changes to evolving approaches to transplant care and organ donation.
These stories emphasize governance, financing, and the relationship between academic institutions and delivery systems, showing how board votes and long-term contracts filter down to clinicians and patients.
Environmental and population health risks
Longworth regularly reports on environmental exposures and air and water quality, treating them as core health issues rather than stand-alone environmental stories.
His coverage of the lawsuit against 3M over PFAS “forever chemicals” examines the company’s plan to stop manufacturing the chemicals and draws on extensive investigative work reviewing video depositions to illuminate how executives and scientists responded when contamination emerged. He also breaks down state drinking water reports, noting that while 97% of residents’ water meets standards, some community systems exceed contamination levels for nitrates and arsenic, and explaining what those exceedances mean for long-term health risks.
On air quality, he reports on the American Lung Association’s State of the Air findings, emphasizing that the Twin Cities received an “F” grade for short-term particle pollution and that hundreds of thousands of children are breathing unhealthy air linked to asthma, heart disease, strokes and cancer. In these pieces, he consistently ties regulatory grades and contaminant measurements to concrete health outcomes and the populations most at risk.
Research, technology and mental health policy
Longworth covers emerging health technologies and clinical research with an eye to how they alter diagnosis, treatment, and symptom relief.
He reports on Mayo Clinic’s AI model for pancreatic cancer detection, explaining that it can spot subtle signs on CT scans up to three years before a typical diagnosis and that it nearly doubles early detection rates compared to specialists reading the same images. He notes that the AI tool is being advanced into clinical testing through the AI-PACED study, tracking how research progresses from retrospective analysis into real-world use for high-risk patients.
In cannabis coverage, he summarizes findings from Minnesota’s medical cannabis program that show cancer patients reporting improvements in nausea, vomiting, appetite, anxiety, depression, and pain over the first four months of use. He also follows infectious disease monitoring, including public health officials’ surveillance of a person who might have been exposed to hantavirus, underscoring that novel and rare infections remain part of the health landscape.
On the policy side, he reports on Minnesota’s social media warning law, describing how platforms will be required to present mental health warnings on login screens, list the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and keep warnings visible until users acknowledge them. Across these stories, he links algorithms, cannabis research, and platform regulation back to their direct implications for diagnosis, symptom management, and mental health support.
Fraud and program integrity in health-related systems
Alongside coverage of access and benefits, Longworth tracks fraud and enforcement actions in health and nutrition programs. He reports on Minnesota Medicaid fraud cases where multiple providers are charged with submitting more than $700,000 in false claims, detailing the mechanisms used to bill for services not rendered and the charges brought by prosecutors.
In another investigation, he covers a case in which a woman stole identities and posed as a therapist within the Medicaid system, explaining how she infiltrated billing structures and the impact on patients whose information was misused.
His reporting on the Feeding Our Future prosecution describes federal recommendations for a 50-year sentence for Aimee Bock, situating the case within what has been described as the nation’s largest COVID-19 pandemic fraud. These pieces focus on dollar amounts, charging documents, and the ways fraud exploits program rules, reinforcing his broader interest in how public systems can fail the people they are meant to 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.