Xavier Mesquita
Xavier Mesquita reports on health, safety and risk, focusing on moments when official warnings meet real-world harm. He is a journalist at the Toronto Star covering health and public safety. He also writes features for outlets such as The Guardian and Toronto Life, carrying the same attention to lived impact into longer reported pieces.
Drug toxicity alerts and overdose surges
His health coverage includes reporting on spikes in overdoses in downtown Toronto, relaying warnings from health agencies and highlighting the areas affected.
He treats overdose surges as public health crises, framing drug toxicity as a systemic issue rather than isolated incidents. Across this work he keeps the focus on the immediate risk to people in the neighbourhoods he covers, and on how authorities respond when harm escalates.
Wildlife incidents and urban public safety
In a story on “concerning coyote behaviour” in Markham, he details multiple recent coyote interactions involving children, including scratches and bites that led families to seek hospital care as a precaution.
He lays out the timeline of incidents, notes the locations and injuries, and relays police guidance urging residents not to interact with coyotes and to supervise pets closely. The reporting emphasises practical risk communication, turning police requests to call in aggressive or sick animals into clear expectations for residents.
Fraud, AI scams and consumer risk
His work also spans financial and digital safety, including reporting that Toronto is on pace to lose hundreds of millions of dollars to fraud amid the rise of AI-generated scams. In that coverage he anchors the scale of the problem in city-level figures and explains how the “burgeoning threat” of AI tools is transforming the fraud landscape. The focus is on what these scams mean for ordinary people, connecting technological change to concrete vulnerability and loss.
Agency warnings and community impact
Across health, wildlife and fraud stories, his reporting consistently centres official warnings from police, public health agencies and other authorities.
He uses their statements, data and advisories to define the risk, then pairs them with recent incidents to show what those warnings mean on the ground. The result is coverage that treats health and safety as everyday concerns, translating institutional language into clear narratives about danger, response and responsibility for the communities he writes about.
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.