About Us
Healthy Debate publishes journalism about health care in Canada. Free to read. Free to republish.
Who We Are
Healthy Debate publishes journalism about health care in Canada by the people whose lives it touches the most, from physicians, patients and caregivers to health journalists, academics, and advocates. Our unique focus on giving a platform to health-care insiders allows us to provide detailed coverage of the inner workings—and dysfunctions—of this important sphere of Canadian society.
We pride ourselves on covering the nitty gritty of Canadian health care through clear, captivating op-eds and reported features. This allows us to be a forum where the general public learns about, discusses, and debates health care in Canada—and, importantly, imagines what it could become.
Our Team
Healthy Debate’s editorial team is staffed by professionals with medical and journalistic backgrounds who make sure our coverage of health care in Canada translates what health-care insiders are seeing and thinking into articles accessible to readers from all walks of life. We’re ER doctors and dogged reporters, physicians and finicky editors, scientists, storytellers, all working together to publish thought-provoking health journalism for everyone.
Seema Marwaha
Editor-in-Chief
Seema Marwaha is a general internal medicine physician, educator, researcher and journalist. She has her master’s in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and has completed a fellowship in global journalism. She is a regular contributor to CBC, Chatelaine and various other media outlets. Her mission is to make medical and educational content more accessible and entertaining.
Jack Romanelli
Managing Editor
Jack is an experienced editor with three decades in journalism and newsroom leadership. He has led several Canadian news organizations including the Montreal Gazette and the Halifax Daily News, and most recently held a series of roles with Postmedia News and the National Post. He is a dedicated mentor who thrives on collaborating with writers to help achieve their best work.
Maddi Dellplain
Digital Editor and Staff Writer
Nicole Naimer
Editorial Intern
Nicole is McMaster Health Sciences Undergraduate student.
Sahil Gupta
Emergency Physician
Sahil Gupta is an emergency room physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. He has a focus in his practice on health equity and works on projects that improve care for disadvantaged groups in the ED. Sahil also works as a freelance journalist with a focus on social issues affecting health care. His written work has been featured in TVO and the New York Times, and he has been a contributor to CBC Radio on health-related topics.
Blair Bigham
Journalist, Scientist and Emergency Physician
Blair Bigham is an award-winning journalist, scientist and emergency physician. He is currently completing a critical care fellowship at Stanford University. He was a Global Journalism Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and associate scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Canadian Medical Association Journal, amongst others, and he frequently appears on radio and television.
Brandon Tang
Internal Medicine Resident Physician
Brandon Tang is an internal medicine resident physician at the University of British Columbia. He completed medical school at the University of Toronto, graduating concurrently with a Master of Science in System Leadership and Innovation. Throughout his training, he has been engaged in education leadership from local to international levels, serving on the board of directors of Resident Doctors of BC, as former co-chair of the Resident Doctors of Canada Practice Committee, and as chief resident of the International Conference on Residency Education. Ultimately, Brandon aspires to make a lasting impact on Canadian health care as a general internist, educator, writer, and health systems leader.
Meera Dalal-Burns
General Internist and Palliative Care Physician
Meera is a general internist, palliative care physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, and journalist with a penchant for the unusual and a love of untold stories. She completed a fellowship in Global Journalism at the Munk school of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto in 2014 and has contributed to local, national and international outlets including CBC, ABC, Al Jazeera English and the Toronto Star. She aspires to write relevant, reliable and relatable health stories.
Catharine Chambers
Epidemiologist
Catharine Chambers is a Vanier scholar and PhD candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. She has over 15 years of experience conducting applied public health research in the areas of communicable disease epidemiology, vaccine program evaluation, and sexually transmitted infections. Through her research, she hopes to find more effective ways for transforming scientific evidence into public health practice. Ms. Chambers completed the Certificate in Health Impact journalism program at the University of Toronto in 2021. She is a regular contributor to Healthy Debate.
Michael Fralick
Co-director
Michael Fralick is a general internist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He completed a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology at Harvard University, including a Research Fellowship in Health Policy at the Program On Regulation Therapeutics and Law (PORTAL). His PhD focused on the intersection between machine learning and pharmacoepidemiology.
Emilio Garcia Flores
Audio Editor
Emilio is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto pursuing a Bachelor of Science, specializing in Neuroscience. He would eventually like to pursue a career in medicine. Outside of the academic life, his most notable achievements in the arts include his various first-place competitive performances on the classical guitar and his grade 10 RCM skill level on this instrument.
Andreas Laupacis
Andreas Laupacis is the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal and founder and former editor-in-chief of Healthy Debate. He is a retired palliative care physician and a health services researcher. He splits his time between Toronto and his farm where he competes against groundhogs for the produce from his vegetable garden.
We gratefully acknowledge the following past board members, writers, and editors who have contributed to making Healthy Debate the vibrant hub for discussion that it is today:
Catherine Varner, Max Binks-Collier, Maureen Taylor, Chika Oriuwa, Kim Barnhardt, Irfan Dhalla, Colin McKenzie, Amol Verma, Joshua Tepper, Michael Nolan, Anne Borden King, Arnav Agarwal, Rishi Bansal, Nikita Singh, Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith, Drew Cumpson, Francine Buchanan, Ngozi Iroanyah, Pat Kelly, Ryan Hinds, Serena Thompson, Zeeshan Ansari, Terri Irwin, Ann Silversides, Christopher Doig, Debra Bournes, Greta Cummings, Gord Winkel, Jill Konkin, Karen Born, Karen Palmer, Mary Ferguson-Paré, Mike Tierney, Robert Allan Bear, Roger Palmer, Sachin R. Pendharkar, Terrence Sullivan, Kieran Quinn, Emily Hughes, Timothy Caulfield, Vanessa Milne, Verna Yiu, Dafna Izenberg, Jeremy Petch and Wendy Glauser.
Supporters
Healthy Debate is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Vohra-Miller Foundation and the Ontario SPOR Support Unit (OSSU). As part of our funding partnership with OSSU, a small portion of our content highlights research that is supported by this organization. None of our sponsors are involved in the research, writing or editing of the articles.
We thank the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital for its generous past support.
Ontario SPOR SUPPORT Unit
The Ontario SPOR SUPPORT Unit (OSSU) is a collaboration across 12 leading health Research Centres, supported by a Coordinating Centre, which facilitates, connects and integrates activities across the network. The initiative engages researchers, patients, clinicians, policy makers, industry representatives and other health system professionals to implement Canada’s Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research within Ontario.
Individual Supporters
Our sincere thanks to these individuals, who have supported Healthy Debate through generous personal donations over the years:
- Abraham Born
- Andreas Laupacis
- Anne Lyddiatt
- Arthur Slutsky
- Carole McMahon
- Carolyn Hudson
- Cathy Roozen
- Charlotte Craig
- Christopher Doig
- David Henry
- David Juurlink
- David Musyj
- Deloitte
- Don Dick
- Dorothy Pringle
- Drs. B. & S. Shah MCP
- Ed Weiss
- Elizabeth Rankin
- Elizabeth Stirling
- George Thomson
- Lynda Covello
- Chris MacDonald
- Irfan Dhalla
- James Maclean
- Jan Hux
- Jeremy Petch
- Jesse MacKinnon
- Jill Konkin
- Joe Rustad
- John Hogenbirk
- John Sproule
- Joshua Tepper
- Judith Glennie
- Karen Born
- Karen Fruetel
- Katie Lundon
- Kaveh Shojania
- Kevin Imrie
- Leslie Ayre-Jaschke
- Linda Murphy
- Marilyn Knox
- Mark Cheung
- Maureen Taylor
- Mike Tierney
- Norman Umali
- Paul Grootendorst
- Peter Dodek
- Robert J. Howard
- Robert Turner
- Sachin Pendharkar
- Terrence Sullivan
- Thomas Feasby
- Timothy Caulfield
- Tom Auger
- Tom Closson
- Tupper Bean
- Verna Yiu
- Will Falk
- William R. C. Blundell
- Yoni Freedhoff
We are also extremely grateful to the following individuals who donated to Healthy Debate’s photodocumentary project, Faces of Health Care:
- Angela Morin
- Anne Lyddiatt
- Anne-Marie Tynan
- Arthur Slutsky
- Ashvin Moorjani
- Catherine Hofstetter
- Danyaal Raza
- Darren Larsen
- David Toole
- Debra Bournes
- Dennis Kendel
- Dilawri Group of Companies
- Fahad Razak
- Gail MacKean
- Graham Scott
- Hannah Chung
- Harvey A Thomson
- Irfan Dhalla
- Ivy Cheng
- Janet Brown
- Jason Manayathu
- Jean Gray
- Jeff Leung
- Jeremy Petch
- Jill Konkin
- Joan McPhail
- Joann Trypuc
- Joe and Jen Rustad
- Johnny Chieng
- Joshua Tepper
- Judith Glennie
- Karen Fruetel
- Kathy Bouey
- Kevin Webster
- Laura Puopolo
- Leslee Thompson
- Leslie Ayre-Jaschke
- Matthew Morgan
- Maureen Taylor
- Melissa Bonnetsmueller
- Mike Tierney
- Mira Marwaha
- Nancy Gill
- Navindra Persaud
- Orla Smith-Callanan
- Peter G M Cox
- Peter MacLeod
- Philippe Chouinard
- Reena Pattani
- Rishi Sahel
- Robert Sargeant
- Sachin Pendharkar
- Samar Saneinejad
- SJH Sprigge
- Suzanne Turner
- Timothy Caulfield
- Thomas Parker
- Tom Closson
- Tom Noseworthy
- Victor Tron
Submissions
Healthy Debate welcomes submissions from anyone who works in or is affected by the health-care system. Click here for our submission guidelines.
Learn With Us
We have created a four-week elective for resident physicians who want to write about health care for the public. Residents within the Department of Medicine will have preferred access, but the elective is open to any residents enrolled in a Canadian medical school. The elective can be done virtually. Click here for more information.
If you are interested in participating, please contact seema@healthydebate.ca or contactus@healthydebate.ca.