Meike Leonard

At the age of 24 Meike has already made a huge impact as a tenacious young reporter with an eye for the issues of the moment and a natural ability for finding the human interest that forms the beating heart of a story. Her remit straddles newspaper and digital news – both of which she has excelled at – but in particular, it’s Meike’s long-form special reports that have led the pack.

One of her first major stories for Mail on Sunday Health probed a ‘hidden’ risk factor that means women are six times more likely to develop breast cancer – a disease that affects one in eight women and kills more than 11,000.

Up to half of women have dense breasts – a physical trait that makes mammograms next-to-useless at detecting cancer. US health chiefs had ordered doctors to inform all women of their breast density risk – yet, as Meike’s report revealed, the NHS is lagging behind.

Women are not routinely informed if they have dense breasts in the UK, and experts say it means cancers are going undetected.

The subject of cancer risk is complex, but Meike skilfully lays out the facts, making the piece effortless to read – using the words of her case studies to hammer home the point.

In another brilliantly put together in-depth report, Meike investigated the links between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) – readymade products that make up more than half of the average British person’s diet – and rising cases of bowel and other cancers in under-50s. It is a trend of such concern that Cancer Research UK is now spearheading multi-million-pound research projects to find answers.

Meike spoke to some of the UK’s most renowned experts, who said that, far from scaremongering, the phenomenon is real. One told her he now has ‘a shocking number of young patients - some under the age of 25. These are people who don’t have any known genetic predisposition and they’re not overweight. In some, it’s been quite striking that they’re quite fit’. Diet, he claims, and in particular UPFs, is the most logical explanation.

Meike’s reporting elegantly explained the truth beyond the hyperbole and uncovered new evidence to arm readers with useful information.

She was also the first to report on the quiet winding down of the NHS’s much publicised long Covid clinics, set up in 2020 with a £10million ring-fenced fund.

While there was no official announcement, hospital trusts were decommissioning services - which Meike discovered by interviewing numerous patients who had been informed by letter the clinics they attend were winding down.

Some trusts denied this was happening but Meike’s persistence - by speaking to the doctors who worked in the clinics themselves, who confirmed the story - helped uncover the truth.

Ultimately, NHS England was accused by medics of ‘de-prioritising’ long Covid by not mandating hospitals keep running the clinics. Meike was commended by doctors and patient groups for championing the misunderstood condition which affects 1.9 million Britons.