Tarla Lambert-Patel
Tarla Lambert-Patel connects women’s health with politics, work and culture, using her role as editor in chief at Women’s Agenda to drive sharp, advocacy-led coverage of how systems serve or fail women. She co-founded Agenda Media, the parent company behind Women’s Agenda and other women-focused news and content brands, and she writes and commissions stories that sit at the intersection of health, policy, business and everyday life. Her work is anchored in a clear equality lens, combining reported features, interviews and commentary to scrutinise power and push for practical change.
Women’s health, care systems and funding
Health stories in Lambert-Patel’s portfolio focus on where care systems break down, and on the people trying to fix those gaps.
In recent coverage she has profiled leaders securing major investment to tackle “one of healthcare’s biggest blind spots”, framing the story around both the funding secured and the structural neglect that made such a blind spot possible in the first place. She highlights the impact of these gaps on women’s lives, while giving space to founders, clinicians and advocates who are redesigning services and reshaping research priorities. Her health pieces sit within a broader conversation about infrastructure and access, treating healthcare not as a standalone topic but as part of the fabric that enables women’s work, family life and economic participation.
Politics and public policy through a gender lens
Lambert-Patel is a politics-focused editor and writer who consistently tests policy decisions against their real-world impact on women. Her analysis of family policy challenges the assumption that there is always a second adult in the household, describing how paid parental leave, early childhood education and workplace recognition of caring responsibilities should be treated as baseline infrastructure, not generous extras.
She has written directly to public figures on health-related controversies, including an open piece on anti-vaccination commentary that separates freedom of choice from the public consequences of undermining health measures.
Her political coverage spans scandals and accountability, from grant rorts and ministerial failures to mass-casualty events and the debates that follow. She has written on Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades and the national conversation on gun law reform that followed, tracking how leaders respond and how communities choose unity or division.
Long-running legal disputes involving prominent figures appear in her work as case studies in power, media and justice, and she regularly covers protests, party dynamics and referendums, stressing the human cost of political tactics. Across these pieces, she ties policy and politics back to questions of safety, representation and trust, rather than treating them as abstract manoeuvring.
Media, culture and representation
Lambert-Patel frequently interrogates how media and popular culture portray women and wield influence.
Her commentary on the potential replacement of a high-profile breakfast television host treats the decision as more than a programming change, arguing that representation in mainstream media affects audiences’ sense of who belongs on screen and whose stories get told. She has critiqued powerful industry figures for rhetoric that minimises the harm caused by gambling, emphasising the lived experience of those affected rather than the spectacle of their public statements.
Her cultural coverage ranges from music stars aligning themselves with political leaders, to politicians and celebrity figures teaming up in ways she describes as offensive and absurd. She writes about protests and policing, comparing local demonstrations with international trends, and she regularly returns to the theme of how public narratives can normalise or challenge inequality. Through these pieces she uses accessible, direct language to connect media decisions and cultural moments back to structural questions about race, gender and power.
Workplaces, leadership and equality
Work and leadership are long-running threads in Lambert-Patel’s writing. She has argued that women do not need to “act like men at work”, instead pushing for workplace cultures that value care, collaboration and diversity of style. Her pieces on gender quotas in media approach the topic pragmatically, urging against endless debate and toward implementation as a way to shift entrenched imbalances in representation and decision-making.
Her reporting on small business and regional recovery focuses on women at the centre of community rebuilding after disasters.
In coverage of research into women-owned small businesses in flood-affected regions, she speaks to the disruption those communities endure and highlights how women often carry the burden of sustaining local economies and social ties. She also writes about outrage directed at women leaders in sport and politics, using those moments to explore double standards, expectations and the way criticism of women in public roles can obscure their competence and contribution.
Across workplace and leadership stories, her emphasis is on structural change, not individual fixes.
Editorial leadership and format
As editor in chief of Women’s Agenda and co-founder of Agenda Media, Lambert-Patel shapes an editorial line that spans business, technology, politics, lifestyle, finance and leadership, always with women’s experiences at the centre. She works across formats: reported news pieces, interviews, opinion columns and campaigns tied to research and events.
Her writing voice is clear and declarative, and she uses that authority to advocate for equality while maintaining a focus on specific decisions, policies and behaviours that can be changed.
Her public professional descriptions emphasise journalism, politics and feminism, and that combination is evident in the stories she chooses and the way she frames them. Health, for her, is inseparable from politics and work; media is inseparable from representation and power. Communications teams looking at her work will find coverage that favours substantive, system-level stories over product announcements, and that responds best to narratives showing tangible impact for women in their lives and careers.
4 more health journalists.
Abida Tasnim
Abida Tasnim is a health writer for The Daily Star who focuses on clear, practical guidance that helps readers recognise risks early and act before everyday illnesses turn into wider public health problems. She reports on infectious disease prevention, using measles coverage to show how outbreaks start with individual decisions and behaviours, not just hospital statistics. Her work explains what happens during an outbreak and then anchors the story in simple steps people can take, such as avoiding crowded places when symptoms appear, practising good hygiene, and seeking medical advice early. She writes direct, action‑oriented health explainers that turn clinical questions about contagion and disease burden into everyday choices. Across her beat, she stresses early recognition, timely care, and prevention as the foundations of healthier communities.
Adrián Carballo Casla
Adrián Carballo Casla stands out for turning complex cohort data on ageing into clear, food‑level advice on what older adults should eat to protect brain health and slow chronic disease. He is a researcher in nutritional epidemiology focused on ageing and chronic disease prevention and a postdoctoral researcher in geriatric epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet, writing health explainers for The Conversation. He reports on how diet quality, especially Mediterranean and Mind‑style patterns, shapes dementia risk, grey matter loss and neurocognitive ageing, and how healthy versus pro‑inflammatory diets alter multimorbidity trajectories. His articles translate findings on flavonoids, polyphenols, folate, omega‑3 fats and dietary nitrates into specific food choices and small, practical changes. Much of his coverage is anchored in his own studies on multimorbidity, high‑risk older adults and tailored dietary recommendations, often syndicated to other outlets.
Ahmed Elbediwy
Ahmed Elbediwy brings a lab-based understanding of cancer biology and clinical biochemistry to public-facing health reporting, linking drug mechanisms and molecular pathways to everyday choices about medicines and products. He writes for The Conversation on weight-loss injections, cancer overdiagnosis and anti-ageing supplements, focusing on obesity medicine, cancer signalling, screening trade-offs, skincare and supplement science. His pieces on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro explain why some people do not respond, how gut hormones and appetite signals work, and where psychological support and nutrition fit alongside prescriptions. He co-authors explainers on cancer risk and overdiagnosis and on whether supplements can reverse ageing, separating established knowledge from emerging research. An award-winning senior lecturer at Kingston University, he favours clear, structured explainers, careful definition of key terms and evidence-based appraisal over hype.
Amanda Sheppeard
Amanda Sheppeard is a managing editor and health journalist known for long, detailed explainers that connect complex clinical research, disability policy and political narratives with the daily realities of doctors and patients. She works at The Medical Republic across editorial leadership and commercial content while reporting widely on medicine for its specialist titles. Her real beat spans autism, disability policy, autoimmune disease, infectious threats and system pressures in primary care and hospitals. She covers subjects such as autism diagnosis and the NDIS, rheumatology’s clinical shifts, weight-loss agents in rheumatoid arthritis, infection control, antimicrobial resistance and new modalities like CAR T-cell therapy and microneedles. She reports by doing the synthesis inside the story, linking trial design, molecular targets, funding rules and policy changes to concrete decisions and workflows in clinics and hospitals.