Health Check

This week, Claudia is joined in the studio by Clare Wilson, Science writer at The i Paper.
After a 28-young woman who was studying infectious diseases in a lab in Siberia has died from pneumonia, Health Check takes an in-depth look at the plague, examines what we know about what has happened and asks how worried we should be about this news.
A new series of papers from the journal, The Lancet, argue that the scale of young people’s digital media use and emerging evidence of harm justify preventative action now. Claudia Hammond speaks to Amy Orben, Research Professor at the University of Cambridge to discuss why it is difficult to gather evidence of harm, whether there is sufficient evidence of harm to encourage intervention and what these potential interventions could be to keep social media usage safe and moderate.
Researchers have developed a ‘speech clock’ which can analyse a person’s voice and estimate their biological age from hundreds of acoustic and linguistic characteristics of their speech. Using machine learning, they recorded the voices of nearly 3000 participants from Latin America and analysed hundreds of features capturing how people speak and what they say. Machine learning models then generated an individual speech age gap - the difference between a person’s speech-predicted age and their actual age - which is associated with multiple independent markers of biological aging, brain health, cognition, social adversity and dementia. The results have just been published in the journal Science Advances. Claudia looks at the potential implications of this ‘speech clock’ and asks how useful it is to measure biological aging.
And does sleeping with your dog disrupt your sleep? We tend to think that dogs disturb the sleep of humans, but not much research been done and previously results have been conflicting. A new study conducted in Ontario and published in PLOS One examines this very question, which Claudia discusses with studio guest Clare.
Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producers: Jonathan Blackwell and Helena Selby

Men and women are frequently treated differently by healthcare systems according to a review of global research published in the journal, PLOS One. Women with the same medical conditions as men are less likely to be offered the medical treatments offered to men such as surgery, statins, or strong painkillers. They are also less likely to be offered treatment for conditions like cardiovascular conditions, kidney disease and Parkinson’s disease. Claudia Hammond is joined by family doctor, Ann Robinson, to discuss.
Claudia and Ann also discuss global disparities in access to dermatological care and the announcement that the Jehovah’s Witness ban on accepting blood components in transfusions has been lifted.
Also, for centuries scientists have thought of the brain as a single, unified organ. But new research reveals that what we call the brain could be two distinct organs that evolved independently over hundreds of millions of years. Claudia speaks to Matthew Grubb, Professor of Neuroscience at King's College London, to ask what we can learn from this revelation and whether he now considers the brain to be two organs.
And Paddy Ross, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Durham University, tells us about his research, that children are far more likely than adults to judge a person's emotions by what they hear rather than what they see.
Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell

Health Check discusses the role of AI in healthcare after the announcement that the Gates Foundation will put hundreds of millions of US dollars towards AI access in low-income communities, with an emphasis on integration in healthcare. Claudia Hammond is joined by Graham Easton, Professor of Clinical Communication Skills at Queen Mary University of London, to ask how AI is already changing the ways in which doctors work.
Health Check reporter Georgia Christie investigates whether the increasing usage of weight loss drugs is changing the products restaurants and food companies are offering to a wider population.
Also, Jessica Ringshaw, clinical neuropsychologist at King’s College London, talks to us about how anaemia in pregnancy is linked to differences in babies' brain development. Babies born to mothers who were anaemic during pregnancy have smaller brain volumes than babies born to mothers who were not according to Jessica’s new study.
And when did you last read a book? Fewer people are reading for pleasure, but getting lost in a good book has repeatedly been linked to substantial cognitive benefits. Claudia and Graham discuss the power of reading and how storytelling can help develop empathy during medical training.
Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producer: Jonathan Blackwell

The Spanish Football Association has announced a new programme that will make fertility treatments such as IVF and egg freezing available to female players and referees, but what difference will it make and how does this move compare to support offered for professional sportswomen globally? Margie Davenport, Professor in Kinesiology, Sport and Recreation at the University of Alberta and retired Team Canada synchronized swimmer explains.
Three kinds of heart attacks that primarily affect women have been redesignated 'primary' attacks in an effort to improve diagnosis and treatment in an area of medicine where women have historically been 'deprioritised'. BBC health reporter Philippa Roxby explains the changes.
In rural Rwanda dust is hard to escape - it’s on the roads, in the fields, and for those living in homes with bare-earth floors, it’s dusty inside too. This has serious effects on air quality in the home, especially for children who are playing or crawling on the ground. Our reporter Ahishakiye Jean d’Amour is in Bugesera district in the east of Rwanda to find out about an organisation called Earth Enable who have developed a safer flooring at an affordable price.
Also, the latest on the global rollout of the RSV vaccine. Plus, eye drops to help you see better at night.
Image: Spain's players pose for a team photo before the FIFA Women's World Cup Europe Zone Qualifiers, group C, football match between Spain and England at Mallorca Son Moix Stadium in Palma de Mallorca, on June 5, 2026. (Photo by JAIME REINA / AFP via Getty Images)
Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producers: Hannah Robins and Georgia Christie

There is still a lot unknown about why period pain can be so intense for some and not others. To find out more, Claudia Hammond speaks with Dr Melissa Lenert, research scientist at the University of Michigan in the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Centre. Her new research examines what early risk factors are associated with the intensity and onset of period pain in adolescents.
Claudia is then joined by Rebecca Katz, Professor and Director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University Medical Center, who has just returned from the 9th World One Health Congress in Lisbon, Portugal. We hear about the public health threats she has been monitoring, including a measles outbreak in Sweden linked to a music festival.
And Health Check listener, Philip in Lagos, Nigeria, got in touch with a question about the link between asthma and the eye condition keratoconus. We spoke to Dr Kareeshma Wadia, a cornea, cataract and refractive surgeon based in Mumbai, India, to get him an answer.
Rebecca also brings us the development that researchers have identified antibodies that could combat alpha-gal syndrome which can cause allergies to meat. And, does the temperature of your morning cup of tea increase your risk for oesophageal cancer?
Presenter: Claudia Hammond
Producers: Jonathan Blackwell and Georgia Christie