MJ Jorge
MJ Jorge reports on health and community life for Calgary Journal, focusing on stories where awareness campaigns, cultural initiatives and public events drive the narrative. Recent pieces move between a pancreatic cancer 5K run, an exhibition of Indigenous artists and musicians, and new city festivals, with an emphasis on how these efforts seek to raise public awareness and foster social change.
Community health campaigns and cancer awareness
In coverage of the First Alberta Kicking PancreAS 5K run, Jorge centres the story on a pancreatic cancer awareness event built around a community race. The article uses the run as the entry point to explain why pancreatic cancer needs more attention, reflecting a health beat that looks at disease through the lens of local initiative rather than abstract statistics. The focus stays on the campaign itself and the act of “shining new light” on pancreatic cancer, signalling an interest in how organized events can change what people know about serious illnesses.
Arts reporting on Indigenous social change
Jorge also writes about cultural work that is explicitly tied to awareness and social change. In a feature on an exhibition at Studio Bell, they cover Indigenous artists and musicians who are described as driven and inspired to bring about awareness and social change. The piece highlights five new contributors from different generations, underscoring how art and music become vehicles for long-running advocacy across age groups rather than one-off performances.
This strand of their reporting shows a comfort with stories where health, identity and activism overlap, even when the frame is an exhibition rather than a clinic.
Local festivals and cultural events
Another strand of Jorge’s work follows local festivals and citywide events.
In coverage of Calgary’s first KiteFest Festival, Jorge reports on the launch of the event and its introduction as a new gathering in the city’s calendar. In a separate story on the Calgary International Film Festival, Jorge highlights how the program is designed to showcase both global diversity and Alberta-made films, balancing attention between international work and local creators. Across these festival pieces, the reporting points out what makes each event distinct - its origins, programming and audiences - rather than treating them as generic listings.
Event-driven feature reporting
Across health, arts and festival coverage, Jorge’s work is structured around specific events - a run, an exhibition, a festival - and uses those occasions as entry points into broader themes of awareness, culture and community engagement.
The cancer run story connects a single 5K event to the larger question of how people learn about and respond to pancreatic cancer. The Studio Bell feature links individual Indigenous artists and musicians to multi-generational efforts toward social change through creative work.
The festival articles show similar patterning, framing film and outdoor celebrations in terms of the diversity they present and the communities they serve. Taken together, this event-led approach distinguishes Jorge’s coverage from routine beat reporting by foregrounding organizers, contributors and causes and by treating each assignment as a chance to explain why the event exists and what kind of awareness it is trying to build.
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.