The brave economists at the TD Bank are gamely attempting to accomplish several impossible tasks at once. Their latest “housing bubble watch” begins with the warning: – no one knows if there is a housing bubble in Canada, and “it is, by definition, impossible to identify a bubble before it bursts”. Okay, one question mark […]
Archives for 2006
Housing "downturn" could be next U.S. disaster
Exactly one year ago, Hurricane Katrina tore a devastating strip out of the U.S. economy, and revealed the failure of successive administrations – Democratic and Republican – to deal with poverty, housingand racism. The bigger lesson from Katrina has been that the steady dismantling of progressive social policy has a deadly impact on the lives […]
Continue ReadingHousing "downturn" could be next U.S. disaster
Another housing announcement
The federal andOntario government made their latest announcement about new affordable housing allocations on Friday. This brings to ten the number of major federal-provincial announcements on this program, which was launched in November of 2001. Among the announcements: – the feds and Ontario have signed not one, but two housingagreementsto get money flowing and homes […]
Community Consultations and LHINs
One of the major challenges of community engagement processes such as the recent consultation undertaken by the Toronto Central LHIN is ensuring that the full diversity of voices and perspectives are heard. Access Alliance, a Toronto Community Health Centre focussing on the health needs of immigrant and refugee communities, was concerned that these communites had […]
Round one goes to community!
It was a surprising late summer storm: News began to emerge, first from London, that the federal government was cutting fiscal 2006 funding for its national homelessness program (called the Supporting Community Partnerships Initiative). The program has been on death-watch for almost 18 months. It was due to die last year, but the federal government […]
Putting the social determinants of health into practice
There has been increasing discussion within Canadian public health circles on how the social determinants of health can be put into practice. The Sudbury and District Health Unit prepared a discussion paper in March 2006. Quebec is the most advanced jurisdiction in integrating traditional public health with comprehensive and integrated interventions on the social determinants […]
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Volunteering & Health
Recent English research on volunteering highlights the analytical value of drilling down into small-scale neighbourhood-based analyses to better understand the dynamics of poor communities. More and more research, including projects in which the Wellesley Institute is involved, focuses on how variations in community structure and connections, access to services and other social determinants in local […]
Canadian Nurses Association on the SDOH
Nurses’ professional associations have long done useful policy work on the social determinants of health. A recent paper from the Canadian Nurses Association highlights social justice as a crucial pre-condition of a healthy society. It sets out a useful Social Justice Gauge as a tool to evaluate policy directions and impact. See it here.
That's hot!!!!!!
Toronto, and many other communities, are suffering extreme – and record-breaking – heat. This is not merely unpleasant, it is deadly. Extreme heat affects the most vulnerable (elderly, young, people with compromised health, people taking certain medications) leading to increased illness and early death, but everyone is affected. There is a “dose-response” relationship with the […]
2007 CCPH Conference Planning Has Begun
Planning for next year’s Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) 10th anniversary conference, April 11-14, 2007 in Toronto is underway! We are delighted to be a partner in the CCPH conference, the first held in Canada. For those of you not familiar with CCPH, the organization is a leading champion in the U.S. for promoting health […]