Over the summer, I participated in the Centre for Environmental Health Equity’s Knowledge Leaders in Children’s Environmental Health program. The program brought together 20 emerging leaders in children’s environmental health research, policy, and community advocacy from across Canada to share knowledge, experience, and priorities and to collaborate to improve health and health equity for children […]
Childhood obesity in Ontario: why we must act now
Childhood obesity is increasing in Ontario and this has caused concern amongst governments, communities, and families. For kids, obesity can also lead to a lifetime of poor health but by tackling childhood obesity now we can lead kids toward a healthy adulthood. In Canada: 26 percent of children and adolescents aged 2-17 are overweight or […]
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Improving Health Policy: Complex Policy and Governance for Complex Issues
The World Health Organization’s European office has just published a very interesting book on Governance for Health in the 21st Century. It begins from a social determinants and broad view of health and well-being, and provides a very comprehensive review of the kinds of governing and decision-making frameworks and approaches that are necessary to enhance […]
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Acting on the Social Determinants of Health: the Potential of Intersectoral Collaboration
Addressing the social determinants of health that underlie pervasive and damaging health inequities is a complex and dynamic challenge — a classic ‘wicked’ policy problem. There is a clear consensus that effective action cannot be organized issue by issue, or silo by silo, but must be collaborative. This means on the ground through coordinating public […]
Health Equity Roadmap: Overview
I have been working with many researchers, practitioners, professional and community networks, LHINs, public health leaders, and governments on how to embed equity in health care planning, organization and delivery. This has covered a wide range of issues: from analyzing hospital equity plans and developing sector wide Community Health Centre plans; through specific issues such […]
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‘Wealth equals health’: Canada’s doctors warn of growing health inequalities
Rising inequalities mean that Canada’s much loved national health care system is increasingly failing in its fundamental goal of good health for all, reports the Canadian Medical Association, which has launched a national conference in Whitehorse. “There are real inequalities around the country,” says CMA President-elect Anna Reid in an interview with Globe and Mail health reporter […]
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Ten Promising Practices on Equity from Sudbury Public Health
Public health is one of the most important policy and service delivery mechanisms for addressing health inequities. The Sudbury and District Health Unit has long played a leadership role in realizing this potential to advance health equity. They undertook innovative research to determine how public health can address systemic health inequities and identified ten promising practices […]
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POWER: A Vital Ingredient for Equity-Driven Health Reform
The POWER (Project for an Ontario Women’s Health Evidence-Based Report) study has been an amazing source of data and evidence on population health, the persistent and damaging nature of health inequities and their underlying social determinants of health. But it has also played a vital role in identifying key directions and opportunities for innovation and […]
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Happy Pride II: Ensuring Health Equity For LGBTQ Communities
The inequitable health outcomes and the stigma, discrimination and other barriers to access to health faced by LGBTQ communities have been well documented. In celebrating Pride, we can also celebrate the enormous work done to address these inequities: from the pioneering HIV/AIDS movement that transformed not just the face of a crucial disease, but how […]
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Driving Health Equity into Action: Lessons from Europe
While high-level commitment to health equity is increasingly widespread and Ontario’s Excellent Care For All Act enshrines equity and population health as key principles of a high quality system, embedding equity into policy and service delivery is a continuing challenge. Luckily a wide range of policy and program planning tools and frameworks are being developed […]
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