Over the last year, the Wellesley Institute has been working with community and health sector partners to provide expert advice on how to build a health-enabling social assistance system to inform the work of the Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario. On Friday, we made our second formal submission to the Commission: […]
Building Equity Into Ontario’s New Health Care Action Plan
The Minister of Health and Long-Term Care recently released an ambitious plan to transform Ontario’s health-care system. It identifies key drivers of change to improve access, quality and value; all underlain by improved system coordination and coherence, and by service and quality innovation. These are positive directions, but there is a critical element missing. We […]
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Equity Dialogues: Equity in Decision-Making and Service Delivery
Equity and population health are among the fundamental principles enshrined in Ontario’s Excellent Care for All Act, and equity has become broadly accepted as a key health system/provider goal. But how can we drive implementation? How do we ensure that equity is embedded within system/organizational planning processes, performance management, deliverables and incentives. Further, how do we […]
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New Research on the Equity Potential of Community-Grounded Primary Care
Brilliant health economist, Bob Evans, occasionally spoke of ‘zombies’: policy and health funding prescriptions that were constantly refuted by evidence but kept coming back. One such zombie is the idea that equity and effectiveness are incompatible. New research from ICES comparing primary care models, however, demonstrates that Community Health Centres, whose fundamental goal is improving health […]
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Dr. Camara Jones on Race, Racism and Canadians’ Health: Video
Dr. Camara Jones from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention gave a lively talk to an engaged audience about the trend of racism in health care in the United States. A national conversation on racism in health care is still lacking in the United States, she argues, and certainly in Canada this is also […]
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Work and Health: Building Assets
The idea of building assets is something that we typically associate with our financial well-being. But a new report from the Health Action Partnership International and the Government of Scotland highlights the connections between “health assets,” work, and health. The report, Working for Equity in Health, argues that approaches to public health almost always focus […]
Misdiagnosis: Drummond’s Health Care Prescription Misses Equity
The Drummond Report’s emphasis on reform and innovation in the way health care is organized and delivered is vital. The objectives of long-term planning, a shift to home and community care, prevention, and integration of health services are right on the mark. But a huge element is missing: equity. Equitable access to services, equitable outcomes […]
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Levers for Change: Hospital Health Equity Plans
Addressing pervasive health inequities is an incredibly complex challenge. Valuable population health research has been done, comprehensive health equity strategies have been developed — but how to drive these strategies into action? One vital way is identifying the key levers that will most effectively support the needed policy, program, investment and service changes, and identifying […]
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Health Equity: Driving Strategy into Action
The Wellesley Institute researches and analyzes the policy changes needed to address the social determinants of health that underlie pervasive and damaging health inequities. Last week Bob Gardner and Steve Barnes spoke to a group of CIHR fellows about driving health equity strategies into action. Bob spoke about acting on health equity within the health […]
The Big Action on Health Is Far Beyond Health Care
I blogged earlier on how crucial it is to build equity into the new Action Plan for Health Care released by the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. This is not just to ensure that high-quality patient-centred care is available equitably to all. But reducing pervasive health inequities is crucial to overall system sustainability: these […]
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