Health Journalistsin Australia

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 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 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 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.

Andie Noonan is a visual journalist at ABC who specialises in turning complex public health risks into clear, data-led, image-rich stories. They focus on how emerging infectious diseases, large-scale health threats and policy decisions translate into everyday consequences, often in Australia, using graphics, photography and social video instead of text-only reporting. Their work on Ebola and other “biblical” diseases traces links between global outbreaks, climate and environmental stress, and gaps in health preparedness, with an emphasis on risk rather than alarmism. Noonan also reports on how sport, recreation and routine consumer behaviour affect physical and psychological health, from violence in children’s community sport to “skimpflation” and changes in supermarket products. Across ABC News, they produce social video, TikTok explainers and archival-style pieces that use evidence, data and strong visuals to make epidemiological and economic issues easy to grasp.

Andrew Chounding links health, environment and technology to everyday life in regional Western Australia, showing how big policy debates land in small towns and on farms. He is a journalist for ABC News across regional services, filing online features and broadcast stories for ABC Great Southern, ABC Pilbara and other local platforms. His beat covers health, biosecurity, agriculture, disability, creative industries, fire management and regional history. He reports on disease control and bird flu, sexual health debates in public libraries, working dogs and commodity stories, and AI training datasets affecting authors. He spends time with farmers, scientists, land managers, writers and community advocates, using their voices to explain technical issues. His work treats health and environmental and technological change as community concerns, focusing on how policy decisions shape livelihoods, landscapes and cultural life outside major cities.

Anina Rich is a cognitive neuroscientist who covers health through the lens of attention, perception and unusual sensory experiences. She writes for The Conversation, where her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience and practical wellbeing, using research on synaesthesia, focus and smartphone use to explain why minds work differently and how routines can be changed. A professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow who leads a synaesthesia research group, she reports on attention, distraction and everyday focus, showing how environment and habits shape neural systems rather than treating focus as pure willpower. She explains synaesthesia and other atypical yet healthy perceptual experiences in clear terms, links studies to everyday examples, and collaborates with other researchers. Her reporting carries over the clarity of experimental design and appears across print, podcasts and radio segments on consciousness and inner experience.

Asharq Al Awsat’s health coverage is distinct for its concise, data-led news briefs that foreground official figures, named agencies, and formal agreements over personal narratives. They work within the English edition of Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arabic international newspaper focused on breaking world news and global coverage, with refreshed digital platforms and integrated technology. Their reporting tracks infectious disease outbreaks, pressured health systems, and major policy initiatives in conflict-affected and high-profile settings, using WHO updates, case counts, mortality figures, and funding totals to show risk and response. They link outbreaks in places like DR Congo, Sudan, and Yemen to wider humanitarian, governance, and displacement concerns, and follow Saudi-led health initiatives, conferences, and Hajj preparedness as elements of regional and global health security. The tone is direct and informational, grounded in institutional statements and measurable impacts.

Ben Sullivan is a health and science journalist who makes complex clinical research and emerging diagnostics clear in everyday language, with an emphasis on what changes in practice rather than on the technology alone. He covers how new tests and treatments perform in rigorous studies and what that performance means for patients, clinicians, and health systems, repeatedly reporting on trials of urine-based prostate cancer screening, blood and fluid biomarkers, screening strategies, and risk-stratification tools. He focuses on sensitivity, specificity, comparative effectiveness, and patient burden, walking through study populations, follow-up, endpoints, and downstream impact. He also reports on neuroscience, cognition, and brain-directed therapies, linking mechanisms to clinical outcomes. Sullivan founded and edits Science Blog, a long-running online science outlet for plain-language reporting across health, brain and behavior, combining writing and curation with attention to the full research pipeline.

Bianca Nogrady is an award-winning freelance science journalist and author whose reporting links health system structures to everyday clinical practice. She covers medical news for Medscape, focusing on relationships between doctors, insurers, and government funding, vertical integration of private health insurers into general practice, and how funding models and ownership affect care quality, patient choice, and referral patterns. Her beat includes health policy, workforce planning, preventive care and screening programs, osteoarthritis and musculoskeletal medicine, rheumatology and vasculitis, infection risk in immunosuppressed patients, and emergency care and digital tools in cardiology. She reports by interrogating trial design, outcome measures, and certainty of evidence, foregrounding nuanced or inconclusive findings, and showing how system-level decisions and clinical data translate into real-world trade-offs for clinicians, patients, and the science community.

Brooke Nickel examines how health information, marketing and celebrity narratives shape what people think about medical tests, cancer risk and screening. She writes for The Conversation on expanding health technologies, overdiagnosis and the evidence behind different forms of prevention and early detection. Her core beat is cancer communication, with a focus on cancer stories and public response, breast and prostate cancer screening, and the psychosocial impacts of diagnosis and treatment. She reports on how media and influencer narratives about risk, early detection and survivorship interact with guidelines, and how social media posts and longevity services promote overtesting and low-value interventions. Her work draws on research and general practice perspectives, explains trade-offs between benefits and harms, and shows how system-level screening decisions affect consultations and informed consent.

Caitlyn Rintoul is a Walkley award-winning federal political reporter whose defining work traces how health, safety and social policy collide with politics, industry and daily life. She reports for The West Australian at Seven West Media, known for coverage that exposes systemic failures and their impact on people. Her recent health reporting follows pressures on the public health system, from paediatric ADHD wait lists to COVID-19 and emerging threats like H5 bird flu, using interviews and official data to show everyday consequences for families and communities. Her investigative series on sexual assault and harassment in the resources sector, including FIFO workforces, revealed widespread harm and helped drive scrutiny of industry culture and responses. Across politics, regulation, sport governance and housing, she connects national and corporate decisions to lived realities, working in news, investigations, opinion and audio to explain complex systems in clear, direct terms.

Cason Ho is a reporter at the ABC whose work stands out for its focus on how health and welfare systems, laws and institutions shape people’s lives. He covers health through outbreaks and long-term conditions, including deadly bird flu and dementia-related guardianship, tracing policy decisions down to their consequences for vulnerable people. He reports on public trustees, guardianship and the “weaponising” of state powers, staying with funding models, fee structures and legal thresholds while foregrounding those affected. His wider reporting connects health to justice, housing, budgets, education, elections, environment and resources, from deaths in custody and social housing spending to forest rehabilitation and critical minerals strategy. He often works on longer digital features, using clear numbers, simple comparisons and detailed institutional reporting to show how government and corporate decisions reshape collective wellbeing.

Dr Cassandra Pattinson is a sleep and circadian rhythms researcher whose writing stands out for turning quantified risks from large studies into clear actions families can use. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Child Health Research Centre in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Queensland, and writes for UQ News. Her core beat is how everyday behaviours like screen use, routines and light exposure shape health, especially children’s sleep. She covers child sleep, screen time, household routines, smartphone use, circadian rhythms and mental health across childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Her reporting explains mechanisms such as melatonin disruption and social jet lag, highlights sample sizes and specific effects, and then sets out concrete steps on bedroom environments, pre-bed routines, device timing and placement, keeping the prose direct and free of jargon.

Charles J. Dimitroff focuses on how the tumor microenvironment and sugar biology of immune cells shape whether cancer treatments work. He writes for The Conversation on how cancers build hostile ecosystems that control immune cell entry, action and survival, with a flagship explainer on immune cells infiltrating tumors’ hostile microenvironment and using “sugar shields” to break in. He draws on his cellular and molecular medicine research at Florida International University, studying carbohydrate-binding proteins and engineered sugar coatings that alter immune cell behaviour in cancer. His reporting centres on glycoengineered CAR-T cells, sugar shields, galectins and immune surveillance, treating the microenvironment as the main story and linking microscopic sugar interactions to clinical outcomes. He explains immune cell adhesion, migration and persistence in clear systems-level narratives about next-generation immunotherapies and tumor microenvironment–modifying strategies.

Charlton Hart is an award-winning senior reporter whose hallmark is treating health outcomes as inseparable from political decision-making, exposing avoidable tragedy and systemic failure in a direct, front-page style. He works for The West Australian and reports across its platforms, including PerthNow and The Nightly, joining hard news, investigations and opinion to question official claims about health care and demand answers from those in charge. His beat is health and politics, focusing on hospital crises, public health threats, domestic violence and crime, and the struggle over responsibility for funding and performance. He reports through human stories and clear timelines, from baby Willow’s death to AFL great Bryan Cousins’ motor neurone disease diagnosis, drawing out growing outrage and lines crossed. A decade of major-story reporting on Australia’s east coast and broadcast experience shapes his strong leads and vivid, watchdog style.

Clancy Balen stands out for turning health, environment and public policy into clear stories that connect government and industry decisions to people, animals and ecosystems. He is a multi-platform reporter and digital producer at ABC News Hobart. His beat covers health policy, vaccines, clinical oversight, salmon aquaculture, marine science, fisheries, climate research, waste, and community responses to environmental pressure. He reports on topics such as vaccination programs, antibiotic use in aquaculture, Antarctic sea ice, sardine stocks, plastic waste and protest history. He uses expert research, official data, lived experience, images and social platforms to explain complex issues. He has also been awarded Best New Journalist at the 2024 MEAA Tasmanian Media Awards.

David Salazar is a Fast Company editor known for building large editorial packages and lists that show how innovation reshapes healthcare, consumer life, and culture. He focuses on emerging technologies and mission-driven businesses, organizing complex topics into clear case studies grouped by themes like the future of healthcare, consumer empowerment, and AI in media. His World Changing Ideas health coverage profiles early-stage diagnostics, treatments, care environments, and radical interventions, always linking inventions to systemic problems in healthcare. He also examines consumer-facing brands that change how people access and pay for products and services, and covers synthetic media and AI’s impact on music, entertainment, and global culture. He extends this work into audio and video, hosting and moderating conversations that connect individual projects to broader economic and cultural trends.

Dr. Priyom Bose is a science writer and active researcher whose medical reporting combines laboratory fluency with clear clinical framing. She writes for News Medical, covering medical research and health with a focus on how biology, environment, and everyday exposures shape clinical outcomes. She holds a PhD in plant biology and biotechnology and has co‑authored peer‑reviewed research articles, grounding her work in experimental design and data interpretation. Her core beat spans life science, medicine, biotechnology, environmental science, and technology, with regular coverage of pediatric asthma and pet exposure, weather‑linked variation in mental health service use, mechanistic infection and immunity research around COVID‑19, diet and inflammation, advanced protein analysis techniques, and low‑carbon aviation. She reports in straightforward news and feature formats, summarizing questions, findings, and limits in plain language and keeping the emphasis on real‑world health and system‑level implications.

Elaine Chen is STAT’s national biotech reporter, and she is especially known for covering obesity and cardiometabolic drugs. She reports on how biopharma science connects with business, regulation, and politics, with a focus on GLP-1 therapies, payment models, FDA decisions, investor expectations, and the competitive strategies of drug makers. Her work also covers diabetes, heart drugs, licensing deals, partnerships, portfolio changes, psychedelics, peptide-based drugs, and biotech’s ties to China. She writes breaking news and deeper analysis, co-authors The Readout newsletter, and co-hosts the weekly biotech podcast The Readout Loud. She explains trial results, regulatory shifts, company commentary, and market reaction in clear, direct terms.

Elizabeth Gregerson writes about how system design quietly determines who gets access to cancer care. She reports for Becker’s Oncology, covering oncology and cancer care with a focus on how systems, policy and technology shape outcomes for patients and cancer programs. Her work centers on access and equity in cancer services, including fertility preservation, clinical trial participation and survivorship care. She builds stories around concrete data, multi-voice analysis and operational detail, often using a “what to know” format to make contested areas like breast cancer screening and survivorship more clear. Gregerson also tracks how digital tools, remote monitoring and AI change cancer treatment, stressing both promise and guardrails. She closely follows cancer centers opening, expanding and collaborating, tying organizational news and leadership moves back to capacity, coverage and the practical delivery of care.

Emily Kaine is a health reporter who focuses on how medical systems treat people at their most vulnerable, especially women facing medical misogyny, chronic illness and structural bias in care. She covers health for The Sydney Morning Herald, co-reporting its Walkley Award-winning “medical misogyny” series, including “From wandering wombs to the missing clitoris: How medical misogyny works.” Her work traces historic beliefs about women’s bodies through to their impact in modern medicine, using women’s own accounts and anonymous call-outs as primary sources. She reports on chronic and life-limiting illness, workplace impacts and policy gaps, threading legislative and funding changes through detailed patient stories. Alongside investigations and features, she contributes to fast national news, live blogs and on-the-ground vox pops, keeping a clear focus on how official decisions shape people’s everyday lives and trust in health systems.

Emmet Livingstone is an independent multimedia journalist who reports on health emergencies and their human impact in the Democratic Republic of Congo, bringing audiences into Ebola wards, frontline towns and improvised clinics. He works with NPR, The Economist, France24 and other international outlets, following outbreaks where they intersect with conflict, mineral wealth and local culture. His real beat is Ebola and wider health crises in eastern Congo, frontline conflict around M23 rebels and government forces, the politics of mineral-rich territory, and the role of religion and long-term health questions such as lost science on long COVID. He reports through close, descriptive scenes and interviews with patients, health workers, residents, families, burial teams and local officials, pairing narrative detail with clear explanations of public health guidance, strained health systems, governance gaps and international support.

Enrico de Lazaro reports on human health within a broader science brief, translating complex biomedical and brain research into clear, evidence-based stories about how the body and mind work. He is a science reporter at Sci.News, where he covers health through experimental medicine and neuroscience, genetics and ancient DNA, archaeology, paleoanthropology, physics, astronomy, biology, and paleontology. His health coverage focuses on disease mechanisms, interventions, and how experimental treatments move toward clinical practice, including gene therapy for blinding eye diseases and dementia-related work on light exposure, sleep, and circadian rhythms. He reports on genetics and ancient DNA as tools to understand human ancestry and early medical practice, and on archaeological finds that link tool use, bodily care, and resilience. Across topics, he emphasizes methods, constraints, measurement techniques, and cautious interpretation anchored in peer-reviewed research.

Erin Docherty is a beauty and women’s health journalist at Mamamia who focuses on how appearance, wellbeing and social pressure intersect in everyday life. She mixes product-led beauty coverage with reported health stories that examine how trends, medications and industry norms shape women’s bodies and choices. She writes detailed, practical round ups of beauty products, routines and trends, and breaks down high profile beauty moments and celebrity routines in a direct, explanatory tone that prioritises texture, performance and value. As a rotating co host on Mamamia’s You Beauty podcast, she turns insider expert advice into clear, accessible guidance. Alongside this, she reports on women’s health, relationships, mental load, crime and trauma, always with a service lens and a focus on how external pressures affect women’s bodies, safety and everyday decisions.

Euan Black is the health and wellness reporter at The Australian Financial Review. He stands out for a preventive lens on health. He focuses on avoidable disease, longevity, healthy ageing, fitness, men’s health, mortality patterns, and the link between work and wellbeing. His stories ask how everyday choices, screening, lifestyle, and workplace habits shape long-term outcomes. He uses clear, practical reporting and draws on data, expert input, niche case studies, and his own training and health experiments to test claims and make risks understandable. Before health, he wrote on work and careers, including remote work disputes and workplace dynamics, and he has early international reporting experience.

Fiona Alston stands out for treating young children’s behaviour and health through a nervous-system lens, foregrounding regulation and connection rather than discipline. She is editor at The Sector, known for strategic thinking, operational knowledge and a strong commitment to high-quality education and care. She writes about how health, wellbeing and relationships shape the early years, turning complex research and policy into clear stories that services can use in daily practice. Her beat spans child development, mental health, workforce sustainability and sector reform, including educator burnout, leadership, technology, business resources and provider innovation. She reports on children’s rights, belonging, transitions to school, media representation and nature and science projects, consistently linking scientific findings and sector change to practical steps that build emotionally safe, sustainable early childhood environments.

Fraser Brims is a clinician and researcher who writes for The Conversation on lung cancer screening and respiratory health, using his chest medicine and research background to test how early detection programs match the capacity of the health system. He focuses on Australia’s national lung cancer screening program, examining whether structured screening for high risk groups can shift diagnoses to earlier stages and reduce mortality while existing services absorb new demand. His work on malignant pleural mesothelioma, asbestos related risk and prognosis, and his lead role in guidance on managing incidental pulmonary nodules shapes his reporting on diagnostic pathways and early lung cancer care. He also studies advance care planning in advanced respiratory disease, adding a patient centred view of how screening, treatment options and personal values meet in practice.

Georgia Campion covers the health and performance of agricultural industries with a strong focus on grain production, disease, inputs and seasonal conditions. She writes for Countryman, tracking harvest volumes, regional receivals and cropping across major port zones, including record seasons and multi-billion-dollar years for growers. Her reporting follows grain through bulk handling systems and explains how changing cropped area, rainfall, sowing windows and early seeding shape yield expectations and grower confidence. She brings a health and resilience lens to crop disease, soil suppression, fuel and fertiliser pressures, and biosecurity risks such as H5N1 avian influenza. Campion also reports on transport safety, rail logistics and industry events like the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists launch. A former Albany Advertiser reporter, she blends regional reporting and photography with careful use of crop reports, receival figures and industry analysis.

Giovanni Torre is an editor at the National Indigenous Times whose reporting centres on how health policy and services affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with a sustained focus on access, prevention and systemic neglect. He covers Indigenous health campaigns and public health programs, especially screening and early intervention drives, probing why participation is low and how outreach and communication build trust and cultural safety. His work links racism and health outcomes, treating discrimination as a structural determinant of physical and mental health and examining reforms proposed by Indigenous advocates and oversight bodies. He tracks policy, funding and accountability across health, mental health and social wellbeing services, following announcements through to implementation and service gaps. In journalism since 1998, he draws on long-form, cross-platform experience for major outlets including The New York Times, The Saturday Paper and The West Australian.

Harriet Belderbos is a digital editor at Open Access Government. Her beat is health content, with a focus on vaccines, childhood immunisation policy and practical health promotion frameworks. She stands out for showing how policy decisions and technical standards become real-world protection, logistics and patient safety. She explains official data clearly and adds operational detail, so readers see how health systems deliver care, not just headline announcements. Her work includes meningitis B vaccination, cold chain management and the Circle of Health framework. She also covers research and innovation topics such as fusion energy strategy, quantum technology and digital forensics, and she reports in short, data-led explainer style with concise, accessible prose.

Helen K. Reddel is a respiratory physician and senior researcher whose writing is driven by large, long term datasets on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and how guideline based care plays out in real life. She writes and edits on asthma control, inhaled therapies and chronic respiratory care, with a recurring focus on adult asthma control tracked through structured surveys and clinical instruments. Her articles in the Medical Journal of Australia and other respiratory and allergy journals use real world, nationally representative data, validated tools like the Asthma Control Test, and detailed symptom and treatment metrics to show trends in control, urgent care use, and adherence. As chair of the Global Initiative for Asthma, she explains strategy changes and evidence reviews, links global guidance and national survey findings, and connects system level metrics with patient experience, self management and action plans.

Henrietta Cook is a senior health reporter at The Age who treats health as a system that can fail and focuses on accountability for those failures. She reports on how medical systems, workplaces and policies affect people’s lives, concentrating on hidden harms such as reproductive health, patient safety and pressures on frontline services. Her work draws on data, expert science and lived experience, often unpacking sensitive, under-reported issues like miscarriage, disability services and short staffing in care settings. She previously covered education and state politics in senior reporting and editing roles, building deep knowledge of how governments and departments work. She writes narrative-led features that start with a person’s story and widen to the systemic context, amplifying patients, families, disability advocates, unions and frontline workers while showing the gap between policy intent and real-world outcomes.

Jenae Madden focuses on regional health investigations that link environmental change to community wellbeing, with a clear focus on disability services and zoonotic disease monitoring in rural South Australia. She reports on how National Disability Insurance Scheme policy changes affect regional communities, including exercise physiology services for children with neurological disorders. She covers the tension between review committees and families who rely on specialised therapies, using direct testimony from caregivers. She tracks wildlife disease vectors, such as dead birds tested for H5N1 and turtle mortality events requiring tissue analysis, to show how authorities prepare for zoonotic outbreaks. She also examines infrastructure and resource shortages, data centre expansions, road maintenance disruptions and materials standards, showing how technical policy decisions shape healthcare access and community resilience in remote regions.

Jennifer Merigan is the second generation managing editor of Have a Go News, a long‑running lifestyle newspaper for mature readers, and has been part of the publication since 1998. She manages and edits the paper while writing health and lifestyle stories for older audiences. Her beat is healthy ageing, prevention‑focused health and everyday choices such as diet, activity, social connection, travel and community life. She reports on topics like type 2 diabetes, loneliness, social isolation, community services, public programs, heritage and craft, and travel experiences including an Antarctic day‑trip flight. Her work often uses product and nutrition comparisons, such as muesli bar guides, to connect health advice to weekly decisions. She focuses on clear, practical guidance and extensive community information, linking medical awareness, daily habits and social context in later‑life wellbeing.

Julian Cribb is a science writer focused on a tenfold human existential crisis, treating climate, food, pollution, pandemics, governance, technology and war as one interconnected story about human survival. He blends science, public policy and systems thinking, using long-form analysis to map practical pathways away from catastrophe. He writes for Pearls and Irritations, a public policy journal, and is the author of six books on the human existential emergency, most recently “How to Fix a Broken Planet”. His reporting covers catastrophic risk, planetary health, renewable food, climate change, chemical pollution, waste, leadership, governance and information integrity. He reports through essays, books, talks and interviews that synthesise research across disciplines, showing how food systems, emerging technologies, biosecurity, disinformation and legal frameworks such as an Earth System Treaty interact to shape whether people can live safely on Earth in the decades ahead.

Katinka van de Ven is an internationally recognised expert in alcohol and other drugs whose work centres on client‑centred care and harm reduction across the life course. She writes for The Conversation about real‑world patterns of alcohol and drug use, with a focus on older adults, overdose risk, and how health systems can reduce harm without increasing stigma. Her coverage explains how prescription opioids, benzodiazepines and other medicines interact with ageing bodies, and how health professionals can spot hazardous combinations early. She also reports on cutting back or quitting alcohol, outlining timelines of health benefits and practical strategies for moderating intake, and covers emerging moderation trends such as damp drinking and zebra striping. Alongside journalism she works as a consultant, researcher, associate professor, network founder and journal editor in the alcohol, other drugs and human enhancement drugs field.

Kellie O'Brien is a feature-driven health and culture journalist for Region Illawarra who uses personal stories to connect local wellbeing, creativity and history. She brings more than 18 years of newspaper and radio experience and continues to work as an online marketing and business storytelling consultant, author and speaker. Her health reporting follows individual doctors and focuses on prevention and everyday life. She also profiles authors, books and the local literary scene, treating titles as extensions of lived experience. Her work often covers art, music archives, blue plaques and cultural memory, tracing how communities remember themselves. She writes about history, heritage and a changing city, blending industrial and legal history with contemporary nightlife and social life. Across these strands, she relies on narrative structure and detailed interviews to make complex shifts clear through one person’s story.

Kelly Nealon is a specialist in government programs who covers state-level health and public sector policy with a focus on concrete decisions, funding programs and workforce impacts. She works at Inside State Government and writes short, information-dense pieces that track how clinical services, training pipelines and public servants’ working conditions intersect. Her health coverage centres on workforce, training and pay, including large nurse training initiatives and landmark pay agreements that tie staffing levels to service quality. She reports on research funding and applied innovation at the interface of environment, technology and health, such as AI-driven environmental projects and targeted research fellowships. Her beat also spans public safety, youth justice, policing capacity, domestic and family violence, social infrastructure, state development, infrastructure and cross-portfolio programs, always grounding stories in specific hubs, centres, builds and reviews. Outside the masthead she describes herself as a writer and digital media specialist with a science background.

Laura Andronicos reports on how hard clinical evidence and policy shifts change day-to-day medical practice at the coalface. She writes for The Medical Republic and specialist titles including Oncology Republic, Rheumatology Republic and The Gut Republic. Her beat spans primary care, oncology, rheumatology, gastroenterology, infectious disease, respiratory health, cardiovascular research, reproductive health and AI in healthcare. She covers trial findings, systematic reviews, guideline changes, subsidies and access decisions, with stories on topics such as cancer prevention and treatment, musculoskeletal disease and pain, gut and metabolic health, RSV vaccination and mask technology. Across this work she focuses on trial design, endpoints, quantified outcomes, patient safety and system-level effects, translating technical results into clear, outcome-focused narratives clinicians can act on.

Lauren Bohane reports on health risks emerging in agriculture and regional communities, focusing on how disease, biosecurity and policy decisions affect people and livelihoods. She covers the intersection of public health, food production and rural economies, tracking how health threats and regulation become everyday pressure for farmers, workers and small businesses. Her reporting is closely tied to the farm sector, including bird flu, poultry biosecurity and live animal export inquiries, highlighting health, welfare and economic fallout. She also reports on food systems and commodities, trade shifts, regional business strain, and climate and seasonal stress such as floods, drought and uncertain snow seasons. Alongside written work, she contributes interviews and production across audio formats, co-reporting multi-voice rural pieces and producing programs that foreground local stories and their impact on wellbeing.

Lily Alvino explains how new health research and emerging threats translate into real-world risks and inequities, with clear, practical reporting for a broad audience. She is an intern in the Health and Medical Unit at NBC News, where she covers cancer outcomes, infectious disease, extreme heat, and health misinformation. Her cancer stories focus on long-term progress alongside persistent disparities, using major medical reports to show who benefits and who is left behind. She reports on health misinformation on social media, especially sunscreen content on TikTok, combining study data with expert voices. She covers deadly, drug-resistant fungal infections and the strain they place on health systems, and treats extreme heat as a direct public health risk, centering prevention and readiness. Across topics, she favors evidence-led explainers grounded in fresh studies, official reports, and expert interviews.

Lisa Cox reports on how climate and ecological change drive concrete health risks and responsibilities for people and communities. She is a climate and environment correspondent for Guardian Australia, covering environmental policy, climate impacts and regulatory responses across government and industry. Her work follows federal politics and national decision-making on emissions, resource extraction and environmental protection. She reports on air pollution and climate, corporate behaviour around coal and other fossil fuels, and investment decisions against net zero and ESG commitments. On the health side, she examines infectious disease threats linked to changing ecosystems, and how agencies and ministers assess risk and prepare for emergencies. Her reporting combines science, policy and politics, uses explanatory framing, cites expert evidence and institutional data, and tracks how research and announcements turn into laws, funding and changes in corporate practice.

Louise Birrell writes about how social environments shape young people’s mental health, turning complex epidemiological work on peers and emotional wellbeing into clear takeaways for non-specialist readers. She focuses on adolescence, peer networks and mental health conditions, showing how friendships can carry both risk and support. Her coverage explains large cohort studies on anxiety and depression clustering in school peer groups, and uses these data to illustrate “social transmission” while distinguishing statistical links from causal influence. She is an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the Matilda Centre for research in mental health and substance use, with a prevention program on youth mental health and substance use. She co-designs digital public health tools, peer-support resources and mobile interventions with young people, grounding her journalism in evidence translation, study strengths and limits, and practical, upstream responses to distress in schools and peer groups.

Lucia Auerbach connects rigorous, large-scale health and wellness research to everyday habits, work performance, and consumer behavior. She is a trending news writer for Inc., covering alcohol, health, wellness, and retail for entrepreneurs and decision-makers. Her beat centers on brain health, aging, and cognitive performance, including memory, dementia risk, neuroplasticity, and mechanisms behind cognitive decline. She reports on sleep, food, movement, gut health, longevity, workplace wellbeing, burnout, and musculoskeletal pain, translating complex studies into clear, practical takeaways. Auerbach also covers alcohol and retail trends, treating drinking habits and brand strategy as indicators of generational values and health priorities. She frequently uses a generational lens to examine how younger adults experience aging, stress, risk-taking, and hustle culture. Earlier, she worked as a writer and editor in media and the art world, co-authoring design and fashion coverage.

Madhumita Paul reports on how health outcomes are shaped by food systems, environmental change and economic stress, with emphasis on vulnerable populations and developing countries. She covers how everyday risk factors and diet link to serious disease, including research connecting higher body mass index to elevated risk of multiple cancers and outbreaks like Ebola that strain fragile communities and drive long-term hardship. For Down To Earth, she writes on the environmental footprint of food and agriculture, explaining how food systems drive greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks and what that means for health and livelihoods. Her recent work tracks how health, food and energy crises deepen poverty and global hunger. She works in information management at the Centre for Science and Environment and produces concise, data-driven articles that tie new scientific studies and major reports to wider systems of climate, food, energy and economic policy.

Marcel Klaassen is a Deakin Distinguished Professor and contributor to The Conversation whose coverage of H5N1 bird flu is driven by his own front-line research on bird migration, virus ecology and wildlife disease. He writes within the outlet’s health coverage but treats avian influenza as an issue of animal health, ecology and biosecurity as much as human risk. His recent work explains Australia’s first confirmed H5N1 case in a brown skua, setting out the biological and epidemiological context, the limits of what one wild seabird case means, and why surveillance data matter. He stresses practical vigilance, clear public guidance and biosecurity practices grounded in wild bird monitoring. His journalism is research-led, translating technical lineage data and disease ecology into plain language, and consistently links migratory seabirds, species susceptibility and habitat to national preparedness and on-the-ground response.

Marilynn Larkin is an award-winning medical journalist and editor who translates emerging research in obesity, metabolic health, and chronic disease into concise, clinically focused news that foregrounds practical implications for clinicians. She reports in depth on weight-loss controversies, GLP-1 therapies, phenotype-based obesity and body composition, and metrics such as BMI, waist-to-height ratio, and fat distribution, linking different adiposity phenotypes to brain risks and cognitive decline. Her work balances pharmacologic innovation, trial data, guideline debates, prevention strategies, and the lived experience of patients, including phenomena like food noise. Larkin also examines trial design, eligibility, precision obesity treatment, and inclusive care. With a background in consumer health writing and current clinician-facing reporting, including work in Medscape, she uses clear, accessible language to connect technical evidence with everyday clinical decision-making across chronic disease, prevention, and digital health.

Melissa Sweet links health reporting to democracy and public interest, treating health journalism as a tool for equity, accountability, and civic participation. She is a public health journalist and Editor in Chief of Croakey Health Media, a non‑profit public interest newsroom she helps shape around health equity and the public interest. For more than 30 years she has combined editorial leadership with independent reporting on innovation in health and journalism. Her work sits at the intersection of health and policy, focusing on systems, governance, regulation, public funding, health equity, and Indigenous health. She reports on citizen science, advocacy responses to political movements, media literacy, peace journalism, and global public health, working across articles, events, audio, and long‑form nonfiction to make complex health issues accessible and connected to democratic life.

Monica Rostron uses communications to connect diabetes research, health policy and lived experience, shaping Diabetes Australia’s coverage of emerging science, funding decisions and community programs. She focuses on how new treatments, government investment and equitable access to technology affect people living with diabetes and related conditions. Her work highlights complex forms of diabetes, including combinations with other chronic diseases, and frames research around quality of life and long-term outcomes. She covers policy and funding decisions on insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitoring, medicines access and prevention commitments, translating technical language into practical guidance. She also reports on community champions, education initiatives, outreach partnerships and on-the-ground forums. Her style blends advocacy with clear data and policy detail, always tying numbers and decisions back to everyday access to care and support for people managing diabetes.

Natasha Clark is a health reporter for National Indigenous Times who focuses on how medical risks and disease outbreaks affect Aboriginal people. She covers Indigenous health with a particular interest in rare mosquito-borne disease and other infectious threats that are not widely known but carry serious consequences. Her reporting on an Aboriginal woman who died after contracting a rare mosquito-borne virus following travel in the Kimberley shows how she ties individual cases to broader health risks facing Aboriginal communities. She highlights health impacts of travel and remote environments, including vector-borne disease in tropical regions. Her work sits at the junction of health news and community coverage, connecting clinical detail, environmental health factors and the lived experiences of Indigenous communities.

Nigel Preston is a competitor-turned chronicler of human-powered vehicle racing, pairing deep technical expertise with firsthand competitive experience to reveal details most reporters miss. He now manages the Energy Breakthrough website, coordinating coverage across the event lifecycle from entry announcements through post-race analysis and maintaining a national human-powered vehicle events calendar that links regional competitions in the racing circuit. A self-described HPV tragic, he has raced at Energy Breakthrough since its inception and was part of Bendigo Senior SC teams that took line honours in 2000 and 2001. His beat is human-powered vehicle events and engineering, with a focus on vehicle dynamics, racing strategy, regulations, and formats, especially the Australian HPV Super Series. He reports with an engineer’s eye for aerodynamics, drivetrain efficiency, and the evolution of HPV design over two decades.

Oliver Jacques reports on the health consequences of environmental and policy failures, with sustained coverage of unusually high motor neurone disease rates in the Riverina that exposes systemic gaps in care and accountability. He is the Griffith-based editor of Region Riverina, combining commissioning with his own health and public policy reporting, and works as a freelance journalist whose writing has appeared in major outlets including The Guardian, ABC, Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, SBS and Eureka Street magazine. His beat is community health, rural inequity, political accountability and health-related misconduct, covering issues like the NSW motor neurone disease register, suspected links to blue-green algae, community-led awareness campaigns and large-scale tax fraud. He reports in a direct style, drawing on interviews, official documents and community testimony, centring patients, families and local advocates.

Pan Ding is an associate editor whose work centres on research at the intersection of human health, ageing biology and data-rich omics studies. She focuses on how large-scale molecular measurements and advanced analytical methods reveal mechanisms of disease and enable earlier, more precise detection. Her portfolio emphasises translational ageing research, including plasma proteomic signatures of cellular ageing that predict human disease risk and quantify ageing trajectories to inform stratified prevention and intervention. She also handles data-driven detection and prediction in medicine, overseeing studies that integrate multiple data types and machine learning to improve diagnostics, with attention to external validation and cohort diversity. Across her health beat she favours multi-omics manuscripts that link molecular signatures to clear clinical questions. She serves on the masthead at Nature Communications, managing peer review and shaping publication in human disease, ageing and quantitative biomedical research.

Ricardo J. Soares Magalhaes is a veterinarian and infectious disease epidemiologist whose work is grounded in One Health and population medicine, connecting human, animal and environmental health. He is a European Veterinary Board specialist in population medicine at the University of Queensland and writes about infectious disease with a population health lens. His articles for The Conversation and health education outlets explain how animal outbreaks, biosecurity and vaccination policy translate into risk for pets, people and vulnerable groups. He focuses on zoonotic threats at the backyard animal–human interface, using chickens, household pets and species-by-species risk to make avian influenza and other emerging diseases tangible. His reporting is practical, driven by epidemiological research on surveillance, biosecurity systems, vaccine strategy and health inequality, and offers clear guidance for clinicians, pet owners and policy makers.

Robert Herriman is a microbiologist, editor, and podcaster whose work centers on continuous, data-driven tracking of infectious disease outbreaks and expert audio interviews. He runs Outbreak News Today, an online newsblog magazine focused on how pathogens spread, how health authorities respond, and what those developments mean for public health risk. He publishes regular global outbreak briefs that follow case counts, geography, and official alerts, including detailed coverage of dengue in Sri Lanka, travel-associated dengue and chikungunya in Florida, and diphtheria in Haiti. His beat emphasizes vector-borne, zoonotic, and fungal diseases such as Lyme, histoplasmosis, and screwworms, linking human and animal health and agriculture. Through structured radio and video news reports and interviews with scientific and clinical experts, he frames stories using classical microbiology and public health concepts while keeping the tone concise, clinical, and grounded in official data.

Sally S.J. Brown stands out for health coverage that links yoga, equity and access to care. She is a researcher, writer and wellness practitioner, and now works as a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her beat is public health, health promotion and the sociology of health, with a strong focus on inclusion, accessibility and equity. She covers health inequalities, digital inclusion, social prescribing, disability, autism and ageing, and she often writes about how yoga is used in health systems. Her journalism examines whether promoted interventions really reach marginalised groups and what blocks access, including cost, transport, cultural expectations and physical access. She teaches accessible yoga and works with disadvantaged and under-served populations, bringing research-led, practitioner-informed analysis to her reporting.

Samriddhi Srivastava is an editor at People Matters who focuses on how HR strategy, employee health, and inclusion shape the modern workplace. She covers workplace wellbeing, diversity, equity and inclusion, layoffs, restructuring, and performance management. Her reporting links daily people practices to broader organisational change and pays close attention to what policy choices mean for employees. She writes news, features, and blog-style analysis, often using research and workplace examples to turn studies and company initiatives into clear takeaways for HR leaders. Her past work includes contributions to ANI, Jagran, and India Today. She works in clear, accessible language and keeps employee experience at the center of her coverage.

Samuelle Fajutrao Falk writes about autism, genetic research and research ethics from the combined perspective of a practicing psychiatrist and early-career researcher. She focuses on how autistic people and their families experience genetic studies, stressing trust, data use and the history of eugenics rather than the science alone. She brings clinical and research experience into accessible pieces for The Conversation that foreground the voices and concerns of research participants. Her beat is autism, genetics and research participation, with work on autistic attitudes to genetic research, support or resistance, and fears about data misuse. She reports directly from empirical studies, recruitment conversations and interviews with parents, treating autistic people and carers as experts on their own lives. Her writing links formal diagnosis and treatment pathways with lived experience, language, stigma and disability politics in health research.

Sanjana Gajbhiye is a science writer and researcher whose distinct focus is health at the intersection of environment, behavior, and everyday life. She is a staff writer at Earth.com, where she covers health and science stories tied to environmental change, ecosystems, psychology, and child development. Her beat includes climate impacts on food, air, heat, and farming, early‑life biology and screen time, mental health, happiness, and connection with nature, plus biodiversity and ecosystem science as context for long‑term wellbeing. She stays close to new peer‑reviewed research, anchoring each feature in a specific study, tracing methods, and translating dense findings into clear, practical narratives. With well over two thousand articles, she writes at scale in straightforward language, using narrative science writing to show how research links to risks, choices, resilience, and sustainability.

Sarah Phillips specialises in service-led health and wellbeing features that turn expert insight into practical steps, with a particular focus on joint care, pelvic floor health, mental health and workplace habits. She is a freelance journalist, editor and writer working with the Guardian’s Saturday newspaper and website on special supplements about neurodiversity, anxiety and the brain, and contributes health coverage for the masthead. Her reporting combines clear explanations, structured tips and real people’s stories. She writes expert-led guides on joint health, demystifies pelvic floor health across genders, and frames pelvic care as part of everyday wellbeing. Her editing on neurodiversity and anxiety links science, lived experience and social context. She also covers how relationships, reading and productivity routines shape everyday wellbeing, using interviews and concrete routines to show how small choices affect how people feel.

Shona Hendley is a freelance writer and ex-secondary school teacher who uses her own parenting and classroom experience to unpack how small, often overlooked moments shape family life, child health and emotional wellbeing. She writes for Mamamia as a narrative-driven features writer rather than a hard-news reporter, focusing on everyday parenting pressures, mental load, conflict with relatives, relationship crossroads and the hidden strain on teachers. Her work sits at the intersection of parenting, mental health, anxiety and friendship breakdowns, often blending confessional storytelling with clear description of behaviour and coping strategies. Drawing on her strong interest in education and child development, she links school and home, channels expert advice on issues like myopia and anxiety into simple checklists and explanations, and profiles creative people through the lens of how they manage competing demands and doubts.

Sophie Landau stands out for health reporting that ties policy to lived experience and the daily realities of people in South Australia. She is a news reporter at the ABC, and her work focuses on health systems, social services, mental health, access to care, youth wellbeing, LGBTQIA+ inclusion, and community life. She reports through detailed case studies, first-person stories, interviews, and on-the-ground examples. Her stories have covered free HIV treatment, psychiatrist shortages in regional areas, the preventable death of Theo Papageorgiou, libraries as safe spaces, school refusal, inclusive classrooms, social media use among teenagers, algal bloom health information, flood memory, school breakfast and lunch programs, and the pet trade’s environmental harm. She joined the ABC in 2021 after starting in audio storytelling and radio.

Steve Bryson is a science writer for Huntington’s Disease News who explains in detail how lab findings in genes, proteins, and brain pathways may lead to future treatments for Huntington’s disease. He holds a PhD in biochemistry and spent 18 years as a medical scientist, is a published author in peer-reviewed journals, and is a patented inventor. His core coverage tracks experimental therapies and disease pathways in Huntington’s, especially in mouse and other preclinical models, with a focus on specific signaling cascades, huntingtin protein fragments, CAG repeat effects, and juvenile neuronal development. He reports on translational research and major grants, showing how long-term imaging and developmental studies fit into the search for disease-modifying therapies. He also writes about experimental therapeutics and clinical trial pipelines in related neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s.

Steve Ford puts frontline nurses and nursing voice at the centre of his journalism, using his role as editor of Nursing Times to show how policy, workforce planning and clinical practice affect their work. He leads the editorial team and writes selected news and comment that link national developments directly to staffing, patient care and nurses’ working conditions. He focuses on workforce, policy, leadership, nurse-led clinical improvements, disease outbreaks and global health threats, always through the lens of nursing roles and responsibilities. He champions student and early-career nurses through student initiatives, a dedicated student section and the Student Nursing Times Awards. He has guided Nursing Times’ shift from print to a digital-first model and is pushing for more exclusive investigations, prioritising stories with clear nursing angles, robust evidence and practical impact on nursing practice.

Susie Burrell stands out for translating nutrition science into clear, practical advice on everyday food choices and long-term health, with a strong focus on midlife and women’s wellbeing. She writes health and lifestyle pieces for The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Food that show how supermarket products, pantry staples and eating habits affect weight, energy, sleep and metabolic health. Her work breaks down butter, margarine, blended spreads and convenience foods using fat type, processing, nutritional value, cost and health impact, and ranks canned foods and midlife staples so readers can build balanced meals quickly. She extends this lens through her “Diet Notes with Susie Burrell” podcast, hormone balance community and regular blogging, keeping a direct, prescriptive tone with simple rules, food lists and concrete meal suggestions tied to hunger cues, portion control and sustainable eating patterns.

Tobi Thomas reports on how health systems create and reinforce inequality, focusing on patients and communities most poorly served by care and policy. She is the Guardian’s health and inequalities correspondent, covering disparities within healthcare across the UK and wider health issues. Her beat is defined by health inequality across consumer health, mental health and access to services. She uses data, clinical research and patient testimony to show how outcomes differ by race, gender, condition and access to services, and how stigma, discrimination and system design shape care. Her reporting spans chronic disease, obesity, reproductive health, maternity care, mental health prescribing and HIV stigma, always linking policy, prevention, funding and service design to lived experience. She came into her current role through the Guardian’s Scott Trust bursary scheme, and writes in a plain, evidence-led style with emphasis on underreported experiences.

Torbjörn Åkerstedt focuses on how people misjudge their own sleep and why that gap matters for illness risk and wellbeing. He is a senior professor of psychology in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet and a researcher at the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University. He writes explainers on sleep as a daily health behaviour for The Conversation and other outlets, centred on sleep quality, sleep duration and sleepiness. His recent work examines sex differences in sleep, showing how women and men differ in both objective sleep and self‑ratings, and how this shapes who seeks help for insomnia and related conditions. He links everyday sleep complaints to long‑term risks such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and mortality, drawing on cohort data, lab recordings and studies of work stress, social routines and accidents to ground his reporting.