Alanna Smith

Alanna Smith examines how health policy and politics translate into access to care on the ground, with a consistent emphasis on health equity, infectious disease and the toxic drug crisis. Her reporting connects big‑picture decisions to the real experiences of patients, families and front‑line workers across Canada. She brings a national lens to health while returning repeatedly to the systems and pressures shaping care in Western Canada.

She is a national health reporter with The Globe and Mail, focused on infectious diseases, hospitals and long-term care, health equity, mental health and drug policy. She joined The Globe and Mail in 2022 after reporting for other Canadian outlets, including wire services and metropolitan dailies. Her work has been recognized by national journalism and press freedom organizations.

Health care access and equity

Access to health services and who receives timely, high‑quality care is a central thread in Smith’s work.

She covers research and policy that expose inequities in outcomes, including reporting on how female patients in Ontario are less likely to be admitted to specialized trauma centres, and the implications for survival and recovery. She extends this focus to structural questions about the health system, such as a public‑private health care model proposed in Alberta that legal experts argue breaches the Canada Health Act.

In that coverage she dissects how funding arrangements, privatization and federal standards intersect, and what those shifts could mean for patients who rely on public care.

Smith also reports on the role of volunteers and non‑professional caregivers in sustaining Canada’s health system.

In a reader‑focused piece on volunteer health care, she examines what volunteers are doing across the country and how the system can better care for its patients. Her health equity lens is evident in stories about long-term care facilities, hospitals under strain and communities facing barriers to timely treatment, consistently tying individual experiences back to systemic gaps.

Drug policy and the toxic drug crisis

Drug policy and the toxic drug crisis are another core pillar of her beat.

Smith contributes to The Globe and Mail’s continuing series on Canada’s drug toxicity emergency, including a major piece exploring why fentanyl deaths in Europe are a fraction of those seen in North America. In that work she compares regulatory approaches, treatment systems and harm‑reduction strategies, framing Canada’s overdose toll within a broader international context.

Her coverage of drug policy in Alberta and beyond looks at how provincial and federal decisions influence overdose trends, treatment access and the prospects for reform.

Across these stories, Smith treats the poisoned drug supply as both a health and social crisis. She traces the human consequences of policy choices, highlighting families, communities and front‑line responders grappling with preventable deaths while scrutinizing the effectiveness of government responses.

That mix of narrative reporting and policy analysis distinguishes her work from more routine crime or incident‑based coverage of substance use.

Infectious disease and respiratory viruses

Smith reports extensively on infectious diseases, from respiratory viruses to vaccine‑preventable illnesses. She covers seasonal surges of norovirus, influenza, COVID‑19 and RSV, including explaining why “everyone you know is sick” during peak respiratory virus seasons and how hospitals are affected. As part of this work, she publishes data tracking respiratory virus activity across the country and points audiences to vaccination resources and preventive measures.

Her stories and podcast appearances in this area translate epidemiological trends into clear guidance about risk and protection.

Her infectious‑disease coverage also includes breaking news on events such as Canada losing its measles elimination status, and the public health fallout from declining vaccination.

In longer features, she helps unpack complex medical advances, such as co‑authoring a year‑end piece on notable breakthroughs in health and medicine, including custom gene‑editing therapies for rare genetic disorders. These pieces balance scientific detail with patient stories and system‑level implications, positioning new treatments within debates about access, regulation and cost.

Health policy, law and politics

The intersection of health and politics is explicitly part of Smith’s remit and a defining feature of her coverage. She reports on legal and policy fights around gender‑affirming health care in Alberta, explaining new laws, the rationale offered by the provincial government, and why applicants are challenging the measures in court. Her work on proposed limits to transgender rights explores how restrictions on medical treatments for youth and changes to sports policies fit into broader political conflicts between provincial and federal governments. In these stories she combines legal analysis, political context and patient perspectives to show how rights debates unfold inside health systems.

Smith’s health‑policy reporting spans federal standards, provincial reforms and the everyday realities inside clinics and hospitals. She has written about how health care access, medical breakthroughs and policy decisions intersect nationwide, while maintaining a close focus on Western Canadian developments in areas such as drug policy and social services.

Across beats, she approaches health as a system shaped by legislation, budgets and governance, not just clinical practice, which makes her work particularly relevant for stories that sit at the junction of medicine, law and public administration.