My name is Melina, and I’ve spent my career working inside the healthcare system, not writing about it from the outside.
I hold certifications as a Surgical Technologist (CST), a Certified Medical Assistant (CMA), and a Billing and Coding Associate (CCA). Since 2008, I’ve worked across clinical and administrative sides of healthcare, including time in operating rooms, outpatient settings, and medical billing. I’ve read procedure notes, navigated insurance denials, and watched firsthand how clinical decisions get translated, and sometimes badly mistranslated, into the documentation that follows patients through the system.
Health Evidence Digest grew out of a frustration I kept running into: most health journalism skips the part where the evidence actually lives. A headline will say a drug “works” based on a surrogate endpoint that was never validated against real patient outcomes. A news story will cover an FDA approval without mentioning that it came through the accelerated pathway, or explaining what that pathway actually requires. Readers deserve better than that, and working healthcare professionals definitely do.
Every post here starts with the primary source. That means the FDA press release, the clinical trial publication, the regulatory guidance document, or the post-market safety report. I work outward from there. I try to be clear about what the evidence shows and, just as importantly, what it doesn’t, because in healthcare that second part often matters more.
Topics I cover regularly:
- FDA approvals and accelerated approval pathways, including what surrogate endpoints actually mean for patients
- Rare disease research and the patient advocacy communities driving it
- Oncology approvals and companion diagnostics
- Clinical trial design and how to read study results with appropriate skepticism
- Drug safety updates, post-market surveillance, and FDA guidance documents
If you work in healthcare and have ever felt like health reporting was written by someone who has never set foot in a clinical environment, this site is for you. If you’re a patient or caregiver trying to figure out what an FDA approval actually means for your situation, this site is for you too.
Questions or feedback? You can reach me through the Contact page.