Karen Pauls
Karen Pauls follows Manitoba stories that carry national and global consequences, focusing on health, public safety and the systems that connect them.
She is a national reporter for the CBC, filing for the network’s national news coverage and working across daily news, feature and documentary formats. Her recent health reporting spans global pandemic preparedness, infectious disease labs, mosquito-borne threats and changes to family doctor training.
Pandemic preparedness and infectious disease
Pauls treats infectious disease as a structural risk rather than a series of isolated outbreaks. In coverage of global pandemic preparedness, she focuses on the gap between what experts say is needed and how the world is actually planning, grounding the discussion in current scientific and policy debates.
Her reporting on a Chinese researcher escorted from a high-security infectious disease laboratory under RCMP investigation tracks how institutions respond to internal breaches, balancing technical detail with clear explanations of public safety assurances.
Her long-standing interest in emerging infections is evident in earlier work on the anniversary of a deadly avian flu outbreak, produced after a Dateline Hong Kong fellowship and built around a radio documentary format. The mosquito problem piece sits in the same line of coverage, using the spread of mosquito-borne disease and scientists’ attempts to control vectors to connect everyday experience to global health and climate pressures. Together, these stories show her tendency to link individual events and research projects to wider questions of preparedness and risk.
Health systems and medical training
Alongside outbreak and preparedness coverage, Pauls reports on how health systems evolve and what those changes mean for patients and practitioners.
In her work on Canada’s move toward three-year training for family doctors, she explores how policy shifts shape the pipeline of physicians and the balance between service demands and training quality. The piece looks at the implications for existing doctors, residents and communities that rely on primary care, making clear how a curriculum change translates into access and workload on the ground.
Her pandemic preparedness reporting also touches the health system, examining investment in prevention, surveillance and response capacity rather than focusing only on acute crisis moments. Across these stories, she tends to frame health policy decisions in terms of trade-offs and long-term consequences, drawing on expert testimony and institutional voices to map what is at stake.
Public safety, justice and accountability
Pauls covers public safety and justice as they intersect with health, trauma and community trust. Her ongoing reporting on the Humboldt Broncos bus crash and the truck driver at the centre of the case follows the legal and immigration process over time, from questions about deportation to the impact on families and survivors.
These stories track how administrative decisions and court rulings reflect and reshape public expectations of accountability after a national tragedy.
In coverage of a Canadian woman murdered on a remote Scottish island, she follows the case through to sentencing, showing how cross-border investigations and trials handle crimes that resonate far beyond one jurisdiction. Her reporting on reservation hijacking targeting Booking.com customers extends the safety lens to cybercrime, explaining how fraudsters exploit travel bookings and what that means for consumers and platforms. Author-bio materials also link her work to earlier coverage of the Greyhound bus killing and asylum seekers, reinforcing a pattern of stories where individual harm opens onto questions of system performance and responsibility.
Documentary and long-form storytelling
Pauls works fluently in long-form and documentary formats as well as daily news. The ibogaine interactive is a detailed exploration of an experimental treatment, using a mix of narrative, scientific context and multimedia to examine both promise and risk.
Her audio work, including the avian flu documentary and contributions recognized by journalism awards, shows a capacity to build complex stories over time and across platforms.
Author biographies describe experience across Canada, the United States and Europe, including stints in major international bureaus.
That background feeds into her national reporting, where international context and scientific detail sit alongside local cases and policy debates. The result is a body of work that treats Manitoba-origin stories as entry points into wider health, safety and justice questions, with an emphasis on clear explanation and long-term consequences.
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.