Sarah Farmer
Sarah Farmer connects health and everyday life on screen as a senior journalist, presenter and reporter at the BBC. She works across health-focused stories that touch on animals, weather and physical wellbeing, often fronting short films and bulletins that mix clear advice with a light, accessible tone.
Equine flu and vaccination
Animal health and preventive medicine are a recurring strand in her work. In a BBC News piece on an equine flu outbreak, she covers calls for horse owners to vaccinate their animals against equine influenza. The story centres on an international dressage rider urging wider uptake of vaccination to protect horses, and Sarah frames the outbreak through that rider’s experience and the risks to the wider equestrian community. The focus is on what owners should do and why, rather than on abstract policy, with the health angle grounded in clear action for a specific group of people.
That approach — taking a defined outbreak or risk and following it through to practical steps for those affected — runs through her health coverage. She tends to anchor stories in one or two strong voices, using their perspective to explain why a medical or veterinary issue matters beyond specialist circles. Her reporting style in this area places as much weight on everyday decision-making, such as choosing to vaccinate, as on the underlying science.
Heat health alerts and weather advice
Sarah also works at the point where health and weather meet. In her weather presenting, she folds public health advice into routine forecasts, warning viewers when heat health alerts are in place and encouraging simple protective steps such as using sun cream during hot spells. One recent piece trails potentially record-breaking May temperatures alongside a reminder to “slap on that suncream”, turning a standard forecast into a short, behaviour-focused health segment.
Across these slots, she treats official alerts and guidance as part of the story, not an add-on. The emphasis is on how heat, sun and changing conditions affect people day to day, and on what they can do to look after themselves. The tone is conversational and unfussy, but the underlying message is clear: weather has direct health consequences, and viewers should respond accordingly.
Rural and physical work on camera
Her reporting often takes her into rural and physically demanding settings, which she uses to illustrate wider wellbeing themes. She has spent a day with a sheep shearing team for BBC News, turning the work of shearing into a visual, on-the-ground piece that shows the effort and skill involved. Rather than covering agriculture from afar, she puts herself into the environment and builds the story around what it feels like to do the job.
This immersive style also appears in lighter features. In a BBC South segment built around the iconic Dirty Dancing lift, she trains with performers and attempts the move herself on camera. The piece is playful, but it still foregrounds preparation, coaching and physical challenge, reflecting her tendency to explore activity and exertion by taking part rather than standing back.
BBC South presenter and reporter
Across these assignments, Sarah works as both a field reporter and an on-screen presenter for BBC South and related BBC outlets. She fronts news pieces, human-interest films and weather updates, switching between more serious health and safety messages and lighter, entertainment-led features. The common thread is a focus on tangible experience — how an equine flu outbreak affects horse owners, how a heat alert changes a day in the sun, what hard physical work or a demanding lift actually feels like.
For communications teams, this means her health coverage is most distinctive when it connects a clear piece of guidance or risk with a specific community and a strong visual or experiential hook. She is well suited to stories that combine health, environment and lifestyle, and that lend themselves to being demonstrated or lived through on camera rather than described in abstract terms.
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.