Yesterday, the Mental Health Commission released Canada’s first-ever mental health strategy. The strategy has been warmly welcomed by many working in mental health fields, including the Canadian Mental Health Association, who is celebrating Mental Health Week under the banner “mental health for all.” The mental health strategy offers some promising directions for achieving good mental […]
Health systems and Health equity
Policy Network: Essay Collection Released
The Policy Network is a London-based European progressive think tank that does innovative research and thinking on pressing issues of social and economic inequality, social change and public policy reform. It has released a new collection of “essays by progressive academics and politicians in Europe on the challenge of immigration and social integration in Western […]
Effective Community Engagement Options
There are many community engagement approaches and tools. One critical challenge is matching the purpose—whether ensuring input to planning or mobilizing community support for reform—to the most effective engagement mechanism. There is no “magic” tool that fits all purposes. Download this file.
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Building Equity Into Health Reform: Innovative Primary Care
Two success conditions for equitable reform of the healthcare system are to increase access to high-quality primary care, especially for the most health disadvantaged populations, and to build on the potential of the many effective front-line and community-based innovations addressing the impact of health disparities across the country. A very interesting recent report from the […]
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Preparing for the World Conference on the Social Determinants of Health
Next month the World Health Organization (WHO) is holding a Conference on the Social Determinants of Health in Rio de Janeiro. The conference aims to strengthen commitments by member states to develop and implement national policies on the social determinants of health to reduce health inequities; and, to share experiences, challenges, and technical knowledge on […]
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Realizing the Potential of Health Equity Impact Assessment
A presentation by Bob Gardner on embedding equity in LHIN and provider deliverables at the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care HEIA Conference Realizing the Potential of Health Equity Impact Assessment from Wellesley Institute
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Casinos equal poor health for the GTA
A new Wellesley Institute health equity impact assessment – The Real Cost of Casinos – shows that building a casino in Toronto will contribute to poor health in our city. Almost 560,000 Ontarians can be defined as problem gamblers and experience tells us that building new casinos increases problem gambling and leads to poorer health […]
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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European reports on policy action to address health inequalities
Two recent reports survey policy action on health inequalities in Europe. The first is a summary of the situation in 21 countries, examples of best practices for local interventions and overall conclusions derived from the European Union’s Closing the Gap project. The report stresses that “it is however at the local level where measures to […]
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Beyond Health Care Reform: Tackling The Social Determinants Of Health Policy
What might be productive directions to incorporate social determinants of health into provincial policy and strategy? This paper outlines four preliminary possibilities.
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