Heather Senoran
Heather Senoran reports for CTV News with a focus on how health care and public policy decisions affect families and communities in Waterloo Region and nearby cities. Her coverage links hospital wait times, public health campaigns, and local controversies to the lived experience of patients, parents, and front-line staff. Alongside health stories, she regularly documents community life, local institutions, and sports in the region, giving a consistent picture of how broader issues play out close to home.
Hospital care and patient access
Much of Senoran’s health reporting centres on what patients and their families face inside the regional hospital system. She has covered the case of a teenager who endured a 19-hour wait for an emergency appendectomy, following the family’s attempts to secure answers from the health minister and highlighting the strain that delays place on both patients and the system.
She tracks complex treatment journeys, including a Guelph toddler’s live liver transplant from an anonymous donor, focusing on the medical details, timelines and the emotional weight on caregivers. She also reports on infectious disease and tick-borne illness, including Lyme disease cases identified in Waterloo Region, treating these stories as both clinical and community concerns.
Across these pieces, she keeps attention on access, urgency and the practical realities patients encounter when they need care.
Her coverage of hospital care often uses individual families as an entry point into systemic issues. In the appendectomy story, she follows the parents’ efforts to obtain a response from political leadership as a way to show how accountability gaps feel on the ground. In the transplant reporting, she illustrates how donor systems, surgical teams and follow-up care intersect, but keeps the child and caregivers at the centre of the narrative.
The health beat work consistently connects policy and capacity questions to the experiences of specific people rather than abstract statistics.
Public health and prevention in the community
Senoran extends health coverage beyond hospitals into community-level prevention and public health behaviour. She has reported on flu shot demand at a local pharmacy, documenting a “flu shot frenzy” and explaining how high interest interacts with supply, staffing and guidance from public health authorities. Her reporting includes practical advice from health professionals on when to seek medical attention and how to avoid spreading illness, translating clinical guidance into everyday decisions for viewers and readers.
She also examines health-related policy debates, such as community reactions to a potential social media ban for children, treating screen-time regulation as both a safety and wellbeing question for families.
In stories about Lyme disease, seasonal flu, and social media use, Senoran’s approach is to show how broad recommendations land in households, schools and workplaces. When she covers flu vaccination, she notes how demand surges affect wait times and staff workload, while still relaying clear criteria for when symptoms warrant escalation of care. In her social media ban coverage, she collects local views, capturing how parents and young people weigh health, safety and autonomy.
This combination of expert guidance and community reaction characterises her public health reporting, grounding policy in lived response.
Community stories across Waterloo Region
Beyond the health beat, Senoran files frequent human-interest stories that sketch the character of Waterloo Region’s communities. She has profiled a 105-year-old woman whose love of space inspired an “out-of-this-world” surprise, using the story to show how personal passions can galvanise neighbours and local institutions. She has reported on Ukrainian refugees rebuilding their lives in the region, tying global conflict to the daily realities of housing, work and belonging in a new community.
Her coverage of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 similarly focuses on local reflection and remembrance, showing how national trauma is marked in specific places and gatherings.
Senoran often uses cultural venues and food to explore community identity.
She has covered a Waterloo cinema celebrating 40 years by going beyond blockbusters to foreground community programming, drawing out how independent venues adapt to changing audiences. In another piece, she profiles a chef whose Indigenous culture and philosophies inform their cuisine in Cambridge, following how culinary work serves as a channel for cultural education and pride. Across these features, she treats individuals - elders, newcomers, chefs, organizers - as central narrators of broader social themes, allowing regional stories to carry wider resonance.
Local institutions, sports and civic debates
Senoran’s reporting also covers the region’s institutions, sports scene and ongoing civic debates.
She has followed the Kitchener Rangers’ path to the Memorial Cup, reporting on team preparation and community anticipation around the tournament. She has documented a special reunion between the Memorial Cup and one of the team’s longest-serving past presidents, framing the event as a bridge between historical legacy and present-day achievement.
Her sports coverage foregrounds people - the players, alumni and supporters - as much as results, highlighting the role of hockey in regional identity.
Her institutional reporting spans schools, transit and higher education. She has covered the opening of a new elementary school in Cambridge that brings public and Catholic boards together in one building, focusing on how the arrangement affects students and families. In municipal politics, she has reported on efforts to reimburse Cambridge taxpayers for light rail transit costs, showing how funding decisions ripple through household budgets and local trust in government. At the post-secondary level, she has reported on allegations that a University of Waterloo student took photographs for a Chinese government official, outlining the claims and their implications for campus security and international relations.
Across these stories, Senoran’s work emphasizes how decisions by institutions - school boards, councils, universities, sports organizations - shape everyday life in the region.
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.