How the Pandemic Makes Health Reporting More Just

Health reporter Moira Wyton joined The Tyee the first week of March — just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to thrust her into the biggest public health story of our generation.

“You know, just a walk in the park,” she jokes.

But her job, supported by the federal Local Journalism Initiative, has been far from easy. During the latest Three Things interview with outreach manager Emma Cooper, Wyton (which is pronounced like "whiten"), shares what it’s been like covering such a fast-moving beat, reporting on everything from deadly infection outbreaks in senior homes to systemic racism in health care.

Then there’s the frequent press briefings with provincial health officials — “the only constant” in her life, she laughs.

“I don’t really know if I’ll ever be a health reporter where the pandemic isn’t the lede,” Wyton says. “I think that’ll take a while.”

Health reporting used to mean covering new hospital openings or transplant policies, Wyton says, but she’s discovered that health is about a lot more than how close one lives to a care centre.

Health is determined by social, structural and demographic factors from housing and employment to whether someone has a disability or is from a racialized community.

And reporting on the beat is about the “cellular level of policy and politics,” as she puts it.

“I think people are really starting to question that utopia of a health-care system up in Canada… and who actually gets that,” Wyton says. “I think it’s all these more hidden aspects of health [that] are coming to the surface, and it makes it easier to report on them in a way that people get.”

This opportunity to report on the underlying issues is one of the ways the pandemic — and now the resurgence of Black Lives Matter and the movement against police violence — is improving health reporting, she says. “That reckoning that we’re in right now fully encapsulates health care in Canada.”

Wyton is careful to credit the grassroots advocates and BIPOC leaders who have been fighting for the health of their communities for decades. Whether she’s reporting on the need for race-based data on COVID-19 outcomes or the push for a safe opioid supply, she’s not just “covering” but “amplifying” existing struggles.

“Organizations like Migrante BC, the newly formed Black in BC [Mutual Aid] collective, and Hogan’s Alley Society have been advocating for this data… because Canada has huge information gaps,” Wyton says. “When you can’t quantify a problem, government and policymakers don’t take seriously the fact that it exists.”

Another story she’s covered is the lack of culturally sensitive guidance when it comes to protecting First Nations from the pandemic, even though Indigenous people have long histories and collective memories of smallpox and the Spanish flu that have created distrust in the government.

“Those diseases were exacerbated by government policy and considered a tool of colonialism because they absolutely decimated communities,” Wyton says. “So when we think about reopening B.C., the First Nations who have taken precautions and banned non-essential travel into their communities aren’t feeling heard. Reporting on those conversations, or lack of conversations, has really helped show that public health guidance doesn’t apply to everyone.”

Even more troubling was a recent story about health-care workers at multiple B.C. emergency rooms playing “games” to guess the blood-alcohol content of Indigenous patients (despite survey findings that Indigenous people actually drink less than non-Indigenous Canadians on average).

“That is playing on some very harmful and colonial stereotypes,” Wyton says. “Games are not games. They have real and concrete impacts on patient care.”

Among all the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on marginalized communities, the impact to drug users in B.C. has been especially stark, according to Wyton. The province reported 170 overdose deaths in May, the highest rate in B.C. history. That’s more deaths in one month than in the whole first wave of COVID-19.

“There’s no way to talk about the public health emergency that is the COVID pandemic without talking about the public health emergency that is the opioid crisis,” Wyton says.

This is another point where she pauses to acknowledge her language and the tireless work of advocates.

“I know that a lot of people who use drugs and advocates don’t like the term ‘opioid crisis’ because it’s not really the drugs that are the problem; it’s the policies and harm done to people who use them that are the problem,” she says. “So I just want to acknowledge that, and I’ll say ‘opioid poisoning’ instead.”

That language is not only more sensitive, it cuts to the chase — the opioid supply in B.C. is causing deaths when it could be regulated more like alcohol or cannabis. The pandemic has shown how quickly the government can take sweeping action to keep the population safe when it wants to, and people are asking why that’s not happening with opioids. Wyton says it all comes down to empathy.

“I think Dr. [Bonnie] Henry is right in a lot of ways that people have really shown how committed they can be to the health of others,” she says. “I think the fact that we can rally that kind of empathy, and that kind of teamwork, is so important [when thinking] about what’s possible in the poisoned drug crisis.”

Wyton says she feels encouraged by the reckoning we’re seeing in media, led by early-career journalists from diverse backgrounds.

“I don’t think there are two sides to racism or two sides to the value of human life,” Wyton says. “So I’m really heartened to see a lot of reporting and feel supported to report from a place of empathy and anti-oppression.”