Kerry Cullinan

At Health-e News Service, South Africa’s only independent, non-profit news agency, Kerry Cullinan heads a team of award-winning journalists and a network of citizen journalists who cover health and science-related news aimed at providing evidence-based information to ordinary people to assist them to make healthy choices and ensuring that decision-makers are kept accountable for their actions. Initially she was a political reporter, but as the AIDS epidemic in South Africa took root – and with it AIDS denialism – she decided that there was more politics in health reporting. Health-e often works with civil society organizations to provide sustained coverage of big public health issues, including AIDS, tobacco control and, more recently, obesity prevention. While covering obesity prevention, Cullinan has come up against some of the methods used by the multinational food industry to cover up the harmful effects of junk food and drink.