Patrice Peck
Patrice Peck is a health journalist at the New York Post whose reporting turns complex medical research, patient stories and expert perspectives into clear coverage of how bodies, brains and health systems work in real life. Her beat spans medical studies, everyday risk factors, women’s health, mental health and health care quality, with a consistent focus on what new findings mean for ordinary people. Across her work she blends scientific detail with narrative and service journalism, making specialized topics feel concrete and urgent without losing nuance.
New studies on the brain, longevity and daily habits
Peck frequently reports on new research that challenges assumptions about the brain, aging and routine behaviors.
In one feature she explains Stanford scientists’ discovery that the human brain is essentially made up of two distinct nervous systems that develop separately, outlining how this could reshape treatment approaches for conditions such as ALS and spinal muscular atrophy. She walks readers through how lab-grown hindbrain motor neurons mimic real cells, spelling out why this opens new paths for studying devastating brainstem diseases.
In another piece she parses a study on TV viewing and cognition, detailing how watching more than a few hours of television a day in young adulthood is linked to poorer executive function, processing speed and higher dementia risk later in life. Her health-care coverage includes work on longevity research, such as reporting on evidence that two simple daily habits can outperform a widely discussed longevity drug, emphasizing practical choices over hype. Across these stories, she treats scientific findings as tools for decision-making, not just headlines, and highlights thresholds, dose-response and caveats rather than vague warnings.
Buzzy medical breakthroughs and hidden risks
Peck often tests the promises of buzzy innovations and technologies by putting them in context with expert scrutiny and real-world trade-offs. In one piece framed around a physician’s perspective, she examines three widely touted medical breakthroughs and explains why they are not as transformative as public enthusiasm suggests, breaking down limitations in evidence and the gap between early-stage findings and clinical impact.
She covers health-related technologies like smart toilet seats designed to detect heart rhythm problems, outlining how such devices might help catch atrial fibrillation before it leads to stroke while also noting what they can and cannot do. Her reporting on the health-threatening AI tools banned in the European Union explores the way stress responses, subtle manipulation and mental health risks are embedded in consumer technologies that remain largely unregulated in the United States. Lifestyle and environment are treated as part of this hidden-risk landscape: she writes about the short amount of daily TV watching that can damage the brain, and about ordinary household items that are dirtier than a toilet seat, using these hooks to anchor detailed discussions of pathogens, brain health and exposure pathways.
The connective thread is a skepticism toward hype and a steady effort to sift genuine value from marketing promises, grounded in interviews with clinicians, toxicologists and other specialists.
Women’s bodies, fertility and childbirth complications
Women’s health and reproductive medicine are a recurring focus, especially where anatomy and risk have long been misunderstood or ignored.
In an explainer on a “forgotten” female body part, she reports on recent research into the rete ovarii, describing its horseshoe-shaped tissue structure and three distinct regions, and showing how its connections to blood vessels, nerves and hormone receptors suggest an important role in ovarian function and fertility. She traces how this structure fell out of medical textbooks when it was wrongly deemed useless, then uses new studies to illustrate how its secreted proteins and responsiveness to estrogen may influence egg maturation and follicle health.
Her reporting on childbirth complications includes a detailed narrative of a patient who died during delivery and was resuscitated after a postmortem C-section, using that story to explain amniotic fluid embolism. She lays out how fetal material entering the bloodstream can trigger catastrophic reactions, and cites data showing the condition’s rarity alongside its position as a leading cause of peripartum heart attack and a major contributor to maternal death.
These pieces pair intimate, high-stakes stories with granular medical explanation, giving readers both the emotional weight of near-fatal events and the statistics, symptoms and diagnostic challenges that shape clinical care.
Mental health, environments and health systems
Peck’s beat extends into mental health, environmental exposures and the performance of health systems, connecting individual experiences to institutional realities.
She has reported on a parent whose violent hallucinations led to an attack on her child, weaving that account together with the widely covered Lindsay Clancy case to illuminate how serious psychiatric symptoms and postpartum disorders can be missed or mishandled. Her coverage of indoor air quality shows how everyday home life exposes people to pollutants from sources such as cleaning products and scented candles, citing toxicologists who warn that indoor air can be significantly worse than outdoor air and linking these exposures to respiratory and long-term health concerns. On the systems side, she writes about national hospital rankings that place three New York City–area institutions among the country’s top facilities, breaking down which specialties lead the honor roll and how metrics across procedures and conditions feed into those ratings.
She notes repeated top positions for neurology, neurosurgery and cardiology at one major health system, and details how another hospital’s performance across all adult specialties sets it apart. Her health-care page also features service-driven reporting on habits and access, consistent with a broader pattern of looking at how people navigate hospitals, insurance and everyday health decisions.
Outside the New York Post, her professional biography underscores a long-standing interest in underreported stories at the intersection of race, culture and identity, and notes past editorial leadership and a broad portfolio of opinion and feature writing with bylines in major national magazines and newspapers. That background informs the way she places health stories within wider conversations about inequity, representation and who gets heard.
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.