How to Write a Compelling Health Feature: A Q&A With Sofia Quaglia

 

 

Most of us can relate to turning to the internet — sometimes referred to as “Dr. Google,” or these days some prefer to visit “Nurse ChatGPT” — for guidance in the midst of a health scare. Sofia Quaglia, an award-winning science journalist who has been published in The Guardian, the BBC, and The New York Times, regularly writes service pieces that offer answers to pressing health concerns. In addition to these science-based explainers, she’s published in-depth coverage on everything from migraines to cutting-edge pharmaceutical developments.  

On May 8, Quaglia will teach a Study Hall course on how to write an engrossing health feature. In the course, she will walk participants through her reporting process and break down the mechanics of good health journalism: gaining a source’s trust, debunking misinformation, and when applicable, grounding the reporting with personal anecdotes. 

Quaglia began her health reporting career at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She authored guides about how to properly wash your hands and test for the virus. More recently, Quaglia’s 2026 BBC feature on migraines drew from her own experience. She also drew from personal experience when she wrote about what she learned from wearing a blood sugar monitor for Slate in 2022.

For Quaglia, centering an individual’s story — whether her own or someone else’s — is a key aspect of creating a successful health feature. It is also how health coverage differs from science reporting more generally. 

“I think there’s a very different style because you’re talking to a person who is directly affected by the issue at hand, rather than trying to educate them about something outside of themselves,” she said. “So there’s a big element [that] you actually have a real impact on patients’ lives.” 

I chatted with Quaglia about her personal approach to health coverage and upcoming class. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Your two-part deep-dive for the BBC about migraines starts off with your personal anecdote about dealing with your own migraines. Can you discuss grounding science-based reporting in a personal anecdote? A lot of these health articles are for people who are searching the internet for answers to their own health issues. So, how do personal anecdotes help communicate this information?  

Working on that story was really interesting. Because I am a person who experiences migraines,  I deeply understood what I was asking questions about. I could go to the doctor and say, ‘This is my case scenario. What do you think about this?”  It added a new level to the reporting. 

According to editors, pieces with personal information or a personal experience, tend to perform better. Readers resonate with a reporter who’s going through the same thing. It gives the piece a narrative slant as well and it makes readers feel heard. 

The migraine deep-dive is honestly one of the pieces of journalism that I’ve received the most personal feedback on. My colleagues texted me, but also so many patients reached out on social media saying, ‘Thank you for writing this story. I totally resonated with this bit.” So having patients in a health story is super important. And if you are a patient with the health condition, then obviously that adds a whole new dimension to the reporting as well.

There’s this risk of sensationalism and people having their worst fears validated through health journalism. One piece that comes to mind is your article about whether or not you can catch diseases from sitting on a toilet seat. That is one of those myths I’ve heard my whole life. Can you talk about reporting on health topics without being sensationalist and alarmist?

Health journalism is a good tool to cut through the bullshit. Health reporters can go in with professional reporting skills, lean on the advice and expertise of scholars who have studied this in laboratories and conducted peer-reviewed studies, and use that reporting to answer questions we may have about our bodies. 

With the story about toilet seats specifically, it turns out you can catch diseases in bathrooms more from stomach bugs and the flu — germs that are spread through our mouths — rather than through the toilet itself. I think those types of health pieces are really interesting because you’re debunking a myth. 

In your view, how did COVID-19 impact the field of health reporting?

I think there are definitely more eyes on health journalism than there ever has been before because a lot of people, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, realized the importance of having good health reporters. I think there are a lot of brilliant health journalists doing really stunning work out there and putting out valuable, good storytelling with accurate information that helps people make sense of the world around them. 

During the pandemic, there were situations where reporters relayed what researchers said, but would then have to correct the record when researchers got more information. As a result, some people on social media voiced their distrust of scientific and media institutions. But that is how health reporting works, science evolves with more information. Can you comment on this dynamic?

Science and journalism do share one thing in common, both are constantly evolving. Stories are changing. We’re updating the information. A good science journalist, a good health journalist, is allowed to tell readers we don’t have all the answers, that there are more questions than there are answers here, and this is an incomplete picture. 

I think a lot of good science journalism does that, and I think it’s about having that honest discourse with readers that what we’re printing is not the final word. 

What can people look forward to with your health feature course?

I’m going to do something a little different. I usually approach a course by giving a broad overview of my work and how I approach health and science topics.This time, we’re actually going to be breaking down stories that I’ve worked on: a quick news story on a health topic, my deep-dive on migraines, and other deep-dives with patients. We’ll go over how to find patients, how to build rapport with patients, how to report on people who’ve had horrible, really scary things happen to them. And then I’m also going to talk about service pieces that I’ve done and reporting on health products, debunking myths surrounding a new probiotic or new device that’s supposedly going to change your life forever. It’s going to be a very example-led workshop based on stories I have covered in the past. I plan to demonstrate that there are a lot of different ways we can be doing health journalism. 

 

Sign up for Sofia’s course