Growing up in Mexico state, Perla Miranda López was surrounded by the news.

At home, her father always encouraged her to read the paper and watch news programs on television. Today, she works for one of Mexico’s most established and well-respected publications, El Universal. “I want to tell stories my father will read,” she says.

Miranda López started out as a photographer at the paper, before moving on to investigations. Now, she reports on health using the skills she picked up along the way in her other roles. “They all complement each other,” she says.

Miranda López focuses on subjects that she says are often overlooked – from the health needs of migrant women on the Mexico-Guatemala border to the real experiences of people living with cancer and the importance of palliative care. While many media outlets focus on illness or disease as individual problems that strike powerless victims, Miranda López reveals the structural factors that influence how people get sick, and how the state responds when they do.

In doing so, Miranda López says she’s writing her subjects into the historical record. It’s part of why she became a journalist in the first place.

“I realized that every story that gets published becomes part of the history of a country,” she says.

-Megan Clement