Wellesley Institute is delighted to announce its CEO, Dr. Kwame McKenzie has been elected to the Board of Director’s of the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA). Since 1924 the OHA has helped to shape and influence health care policy in Ontario. Their vision is to achieve a high performing health system through the for-profit and not-for-profit organizations involved […]
What the Candidates Aren’t Talking About: HEIA in the 2014 Mayoral Election
Over the past four weeks, we’ve been looking at the platforms of the three main mayoral candidates and asking whether their proposals could contribute to good health in Toronto. We found that none of the candidates have set out a vision for a healthy Toronto and none of the candidates have made clear connections between […]
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Transit: HEIA in the 2014 Mayoral Election
Transit is critical to how cities move, grow and interact. Having access to high quality public transit opens doors for people to travel to and from work, school, grocery stores, recreation spaces, and places to socialize. However, our current transit system has significant accessibility and affordability barriers for many Torontonians. Transit service coverage is an […]
Jobs and Poverty Reduction: HEIA in the 2014 Mayoral Election
Having enough money to meet your basic needs is essential to good health. However, too many Torontonians struggle to make ends meet. In Toronto in 2010, 19.3 percent of the population had income under Statistics Canada’s after-tax low income measure.1 This means that almost 497,000 people in the city were struggling to make ends meet, choosing […]
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Green Spaces and Active Transportation: HEIA in the 2014 Mayoral Election
Green Spaces and Active Transportation Usable green spaces and being able to walk or bike around your neighbourhood to get to work or to pick up groceries makes a city livable. Toronto calls itself “a city within a park” and its patterns of development and street design incorporate the provision of parks and green spaces, […]
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Housing: HEIA in the 2014 Mayoral Election
Toronto is experiencing a housing crisis with three major challenges: a lack of affordable housing, poor quality and inadequate social housing, and homelessness. For too many Torontonians the lack of affordable homes means having to spend too much of their income on rent. Housing is considered unaffordable if it costs more than 30 percent of […]
Welcoming Our New CEO
The Staff and Board of the Wellesley Institute are thrilled to announce the appointment of Dr. Kwame McKenzie as our new CEO, effective March 24, 2014. Dr. McKenzie has over 20 years’ experience in research into the social determinants of health, policy development and as an advisor at the highest levels of government. He will […]
Refugee Health Care Cuts In Canada: System Level Costs, Risks And Responses
Recent reforms to federal immigration policies have resulted in preferential treatment to some refugee claimants. The amendments to the Interim Federal Health (IFH) program have created conditional and differential model of health coverage in Canada for refugees. The implications for refugees are grave—many will end up falling through the cracks due to systemic barriers that […]
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Reverse Erosion Of Federal Housing Investments, Urges AFB
The massive funding cuts and erosion of national housing programs in the 1990s continues to fuel a Canada-wide crisis in affordable and adequate housing. That’s the policy finding in the housing chapter of the 2014 Alternative Federal Budget (AFB), released February 5 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The AFB calls for the federal […]
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Your home, Your Health: Presentation to Canadian Federation of Medical Students
The Wellesley Institute’s Director of Housing and Innovation, Michael Shapcott, presented to the Canadian Federation of Medical Students on Feb 2 at their national conference in Ottawa. He focused on the links between good housing and good health, and the critical role that federal investments play in assuring that all Canadians have access to good […]
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