Trisha Pasricha
Trisha Pasricha is a physician and medical columnist at The Washington Post who turns complex evidence from clinical practice and research into clear, actionable answers to everyday health questions. Her work focuses on helping readers navigate decisions about gut health, medications, vaccines, sleep and stress with concrete guidance rather than abstract advice. She writes as both a practicing neurogastroenterologist and a researcher of the gut-brain connection, which gives her columns a mix of scientific depth and practical detail that stands out on the health beat.
Answering reader questions in The Washington Post’s health pages
Pasricha writes a recurring “Ask a Doctor” column for The Washington Post’s Well+Being section, where she responds directly to common health questions from readers.
The column runs online in the health and wellness pages, positioning her work alongside broad consumer health coverage but with a distinct Q&A format grounded in her own clinical perspective. Questions she tackles include when to time the final cup of coffee to protect sleep, how to interpret “gut feelings” in medical decision-making and what new wellness trends, such as grounding parks, actually offer in terms of benefit and risk. Across these pieces she maintains a consistent structure: starting from a specific worry or myth, walking through the underlying science and closing with clear, realistic steps that readers can take in their daily lives.
Gut health and the gut-brain connection
Gut health and the relationship between the digestive system and the brain are central threads in Pasricha’s work.
Beyond her newspaper column, she directs research on gut-brain science at a major academic medical center and holds a faculty role at Harvard Medical School, which feeds into how she explains emerging findings on conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and motility disorders. In media appearances she breaks down topics like the gut’s link to Parkinson’s disease, highlighting how changes in gut function can precede neurological symptoms and what that might mean for prevention and diagnosis. In Washington Post videos and columns she examines how antibiotics disrupt gut bacteria and why reflexively taking a probiotic afterwards is not always the right fix, emphasizing the importance of evidence over marketing claims in decisions about supplements.
Her coverage of bathroom habits and bowel function - echoed in external interviews about her work and book - leans into frank, specific discussion of symptoms, physiology and behavioural changes, making a technical subject accessible without diluting its complexity.
Medications, vaccines and safer everyday care
Pasricha gives substantial attention to how people use medications and vaccines in routine care, often questioning default habits that are accepted but not optimal. In a video column for The Washington Post she walks through five medications she urges patients to reconsider, focusing on common drugs that carry more risk than most people realize or that are used when safer alternatives exist. She discusses side effects, interactions and long-term consequences in concrete terms, encouraging readers to review their medicine cabinets and have specific conversations with their clinicians rather than simply stopping treatment on their own. Her flu shot coverage goes beyond seasonal messaging, explaining how influenza vaccination protects both current health and “future self,” including discussion of research linking vaccination to a lower risk of diseases such as Alzheimer’s. In these pieces she uses numbers and study results to anchor her advice, but she keeps the emphasis on what a person can do now - which vaccines to prioritize, which medications to phase out and how to match treatments to individual risk.
Sleep, stress and practical lifestyle guidance
Alongside clinical topics, Pasricha writes about lifestyle choices that affect sleep, stress and overall well-being, always tying them back to underlying biology. In her column on coffee and sleep, she explains how caffeine metabolism interacts with the body’s sleep drive, then gives readers a specific cut-off time for the last cup to reduce sleep disruption.
Her piece on the country’s first “grounding park” describes firsthand experience with a new wellness space, then situates that experience in what is known - and not yet known - about stress reduction, nervous system regulation and placebo effects. When she writes about “gut feelings,” she uses her own research background to distinguish between intuition informed by experience and reactions driven by anxiety or bias, translating a popular phrase into a framework for safer health decisions.
Across these topics she favours small, concrete behaviour changes over sweeping lifestyle prescriptions, offering readers focused adjustments that connect directly to the science she presents.
Pasricha’s coverage is best understood as science-forward, clinically grounded service journalism: she treats reader questions as starting points for rigorous explanation, and she uses her dual roles in patient care and research to keep that explanation current and precise. Her recurring focus on the gut-brain axis, medication safety, vaccine benefits and realistic lifestyle changes makes her a distinct voice within health reporting, especially for stories that sit at the intersection of everyday habits and evolving medical evidence.
4 more health journalists.
Alanna Smith
Alanna Smith is a national health reporter whose work links health policy and politics to real access to care, with a constant focus on health equity, infectious disease and the toxic drug crisis. She reports for The Globe and Mail on infectious diseases, hospitals and long-term care, mental health, drug policy and the pressures on health systems in Western Canada. Her stories connect big-picture decisions to patients, families, front-line workers and volunteers, showing how funding, privatization and federal standards shape public care. She has covered trauma care inequities, proposed public‑private models in Alberta, drug toxicity and overdose policy, respiratory virus surges, measles elimination, gene‑editing advances and gender‑affirming health care laws. Her work combines narrative reporting, data, legal and policy analysis, and has been recognized by national journalism and press freedom organizations.
Allan Levine
Allan Levine is a historian and author whose journalism uses the past to explain present-day issues. He writes for the Winnipeg Free Press, including the Now & Then column, which examines current events through history. His subjects include public health, disease, medical treatment, health systems, politics, social conflict, strikes, wars, antisemitism and Canadian public life. His polio reporting traces Manitoba epidemics, hospital pressures, treatment, mortality and the arrival of vaccines through archival data and medical history. He also writes about the Winnipeg General Strike and Jewish communities, including discrimination, rights and security. His work draws on books about Canadian political leaders, Jewish history and the wartime economy, including The Dollar A Year Men. He writes long-form, analytical pieces that combine dates, statistics, policy decisions and narrative storytelling to connect people and institutions with broader historical change.
Angela Amato
Angela Amato is a digital news producer with CTV News, and her coverage is distinct for linking health research and public safety concerns to legal and policy decisions that shape daily life. She reports on health, justice, politics, business, arts and culture, crime and public-interest stories. Her health work covers academic and clinical research, including studies on vaping and lung blood flow, exercise tolerance and early heart dysfunction in young adults. She also reports on motorcycle gang arrests, homicide and death investigations, Indigenous justice stories, wildfire evacuations, ambulance contracts, property taxes, labour negotiations and political advocacy rules. She explains complex findings in plain language and stays close to documents, data and expert sources. Her background includes investigative and daily newsrooms, and she has earned nominations for national journalism awards.
Apoorva Mandavilli
Apoorva Mandavilli covers the collision of infectious disease science, vaccine policy and public health agencies for The New York Times, following how research, regulation and politics shape outbreaks and access to vaccines. She reports on science and global health with a steady focus on infectious diseases and pandemics, including Covid-19, mpox, H.I.V., malaria and tuberculosis, treating them as ongoing global threats. Her work explains complex epidemiology and virology in clear narratives about risk, evidence and the consequences of scientific decisions. She repeatedly returns to vaccine policy, law and misinformation, tracing how court fights and agency disputes affect immunization schedules and public trust. She also reports on global health programs, funding cuts and inequity in care and technology. A longtime science journalist and former founding editor in chief of Spectrum, she has written widely on science and health and received major honors for medical science reporting and pandemic coverage.