Emma Tranter
Emma Tranter reports on health, social services and the systems that shape life in northern communities for CBC News. Her coverage follows how health care, public safety and environmental change intersect on the ground in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. She focuses on the consequences of policy decisions for patients, families and front-line workers rather than on abstract announcements.
Health care systems and patient safety
Much of Tranter’s work centres on how health services function in remote regions and what that means for the people who rely on them. She covers funding decisions such as federal investments in Nunavut health care and elder care, spelling out how new money is allocated and which gaps it is meant to address.
In stories about failures in care, including a report on wrong medication and reused syringes at a Nunavut home where two youth died, she works through official findings in detail and ties them to basic questions of safety, oversight and trust.
Her health reporting frequently starts from an incident or report and then broadens to show the system behind it.
She pays attention to how staffing, training and management practices contribute to risk, and she makes space for the experiences of families and communities affected by breakdowns in care. When she covers topics at the edge of health, such as a disease deadly to bats being detected for the first time in the Northwest Territories, she frames them around public health, wildlife impacts and regional preparedness rather than isolated scientific facts.
Community safety, justice and accountability
Tranter also reports on justice and community safety, with a focus on how institutions respond to harm.
Her coverage of a former priest expected to plead guilty to charges of sexual assault against children in Nunavut tracks the case through the courts while keeping the attention on the community and the long shadow of historical abuse. She uses hearings, investigative reports and official statements as anchors, but her emphasis is on what accountability looks like for people who have lived with these cases for years.
Across these stories she treats police, care homes, religious institutions and governments as systems that need scrutiny, not just sources of quotes. She often connects individual cases to wider patterns, such as the handling of allegations, timelines for investigations, and the transparency of public bodies. The tone is direct and factual, but the choice of detail makes clear where processes fall short and where they begin to change.
Environment, industry and everyday life in the North
Another strand of Tranter’s work covers environment, industry and how northern communities adapt to change. She reports on events such as a ship running aground in the Northwest Passage and a new gold mine entering production, explaining the operational facts and then tracing the implications for workers, local communities and the land.
Regulatory decisions, company investigations and government statements appear in her stories, but they are set against practical questions of safety, access and long-term development.
Her coverage of time change policy, including the Northwest Territories ending seasonal clock changes, approaches an abstract policy shift through its impact on daily routines, cross-border coordination and regional identity.
In pieces on evacuees from places like Fort Simpson, she writes closely about how people organise their lives during emergencies, highlighting mutual support, cultural practices and the strain of displacement. Environmental and industrial stories in her archive often sit alongside health themes, showing how climate, infrastructure and resource projects shape the conditions for well-being.
Regional focus and reporting style
Tranter’s reporting has a clear regional focus, with many stories rooted in Nunavut’s communities and the Northwest Territories, particularly the Kitikmeot region.
She has spent several years reporting in Nunavut for a mix of local and national outlets, and that continuity shows in her ability to follow issues over time rather than treating them as one-off events. Her work for CBC News combines shorter breaking pieces with more developed explanatory articles, each written in plain language that keeps expert detail accessible.
She tends to build a story from specific, verifiable facts - a court document, a coroner’s report, a funding announcement, a company statement - and then layer in human experience from residents, patients, staff and community leaders. Quotes are used sparingly and are supported by clear context about what has happened and what is at stake. Across health, justice, environment and industry, the through-line in her coverage is steady attention to how systems serve or fail northern communities, and to the lived reality behind official decisions.
4 more health journalists.
Alanna Smith
Alanna Smith is a national health reporter whose work links health policy and politics to real access to care, with a constant focus on health equity, infectious disease and the toxic drug crisis. She reports for The Globe and Mail on infectious diseases, hospitals and long-term care, mental health, drug policy and the pressures on health systems in Western Canada. Her stories connect big-picture decisions to patients, families, front-line workers and volunteers, showing how funding, privatization and federal standards shape public care. She has covered trauma care inequities, proposed public‑private models in Alberta, drug toxicity and overdose policy, respiratory virus surges, measles elimination, gene‑editing advances and gender‑affirming health care laws. Her work combines narrative reporting, data, legal and policy analysis, and has been recognized by national journalism and press freedom organizations.
Allan Levine
Allan Levine is a historian and author whose journalism uses the past to explain present-day issues. He writes for the Winnipeg Free Press, including the Now & Then column, which examines current events through history. His subjects include public health, disease, medical treatment, health systems, politics, social conflict, strikes, wars, antisemitism and Canadian public life. His polio reporting traces Manitoba epidemics, hospital pressures, treatment, mortality and the arrival of vaccines through archival data and medical history. He also writes about the Winnipeg General Strike and Jewish communities, including discrimination, rights and security. His work draws on books about Canadian political leaders, Jewish history and the wartime economy, including The Dollar A Year Men. He writes long-form, analytical pieces that combine dates, statistics, policy decisions and narrative storytelling to connect people and institutions with broader historical change.
Angela Amato
Angela Amato is a digital news producer with CTV News, and her coverage is distinct for linking health research and public safety concerns to legal and policy decisions that shape daily life. She reports on health, justice, politics, business, arts and culture, crime and public-interest stories. Her health work covers academic and clinical research, including studies on vaping and lung blood flow, exercise tolerance and early heart dysfunction in young adults. She also reports on motorcycle gang arrests, homicide and death investigations, Indigenous justice stories, wildfire evacuations, ambulance contracts, property taxes, labour negotiations and political advocacy rules. She explains complex findings in plain language and stays close to documents, data and expert sources. Her background includes investigative and daily newsrooms, and she has earned nominations for national journalism awards.
Apoorva Mandavilli
Apoorva Mandavilli covers the collision of infectious disease science, vaccine policy and public health agencies for The New York Times, following how research, regulation and politics shape outbreaks and access to vaccines. She reports on science and global health with a steady focus on infectious diseases and pandemics, including Covid-19, mpox, H.I.V., malaria and tuberculosis, treating them as ongoing global threats. Her work explains complex epidemiology and virology in clear narratives about risk, evidence and the consequences of scientific decisions. She repeatedly returns to vaccine policy, law and misinformation, tracing how court fights and agency disputes affect immunization schedules and public trust. She also reports on global health programs, funding cuts and inequity in care and technology. A longtime science journalist and former founding editor in chief of Spectrum, she has written widely on science and health and received major honors for medical science reporting and pandemic coverage.