The most fundamental determinants of our health are what I and others call the ecological determinants of health: air, water, food, fuel, materials, and other “ecosystem goods and services” we derive from nature. A second major set of determinants are the social factors that enable us to meet our basic needs: healthy food, adequate shelter…
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Having worked as a family physician in primary care, as a public-health physician in health planning and as a medical health officer, as an advisor and consultant on health promotion to the World Health Organization — mainly in Europe — as a medical consultant in population and public health at B.C.’s Ministry of Health…
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There is much wringing of hands these days about the state of the Canadian health care system, as well there should be. But in fact, there is no such thing as a Canadian health-care system, although there is a Canadian way of funding health services. In the 1990s, when I helped organize study tours for Swedish health-system managers to visit Canada…
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There is an apocryphal story of a mother taking her young daughter out into the backyard. The child looks up from her iPad and says: “Where are we?” Her mother replies: “It’s called outside.” The point is obvious: We have become so screen-oriented that we…
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It is said that it takes a whole village to raise a child, not just the family and the school. Similarly, the most important message in the decades-old global Healthy Communities movement that I helped to create is that it takes efforts at all levels and across all sectors to create a healthier community.
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One issue we are likely to see a focus on in the upcoming municipal elections is community safety, often focusing on crime and violence. But important though that is, community safety is about much more than that. I recall, as a consultant working on the Healthy Cities initiative with the World Health Organization in the 1980s and 1990s…
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In November 2021, the City of Ottawa completed the process of revising its official plan. My attention was drawn to Ottawa’s plan through a recent news posting by the Canadian Public Health Association, which focused on the role of public health in the development of the new plan.
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We’re All in This Together… Now What?, the final webinar of Creatively United’s Climate and Artists fourth season, explores how we can collectively reduce our carbon footprint by 40% by 2030 and transformatively shift to healthier…
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Housing is fundamental to health. That should not be a surprise, especially in a country with Canada’s climate. The health impacts of being homeless or living in poor-quality housing are well understood, and must be obvious to anyone. But it is not just homelessness that is a concern — there is a much larger problem of affordability. Lack of affordable housing can markedly affect people’s physical, mental and social wellbeing.
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Thursday, April 7, is World Health Day. The theme this year is Our Planet, Our Health. WHO wants to “focus global attention on urgent actions needed to keep humans and the planet healthy and foster a movement to create societies focused on well-being.”
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That is also true globally: “Bonds across countries do not work when bonds within them are broken,” noted the UN’s recent report Our Common Agenda. Which brings me to the World Inequality Report 2022, released in December. The report is published by the World Inequality Lab, based in France, whose major funders include the…
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The World Health Organization’s December 2021 Geneva Charter for Well-being expresses “the urgency of creating sustainable well-being societies, committed to achieving equitable health now and for future generations without breaching ecological limits.” So far, I have mostly focused on the need to stay within ecological boundaries…
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Last week, I described the growing global attention to the concept of a well-being society and economy. The latter has already been the focus of work by several national governments. In particular, New Zealand (Aotearoa) was the first country in the world to develop and present…
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In the more than 40 years I have spent working in public health, I have been guided by a key realization and two principles. The realization was that medicine, in which I was trained, while important, is not the main factor that contributes to good health.
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Even here in Canada, there are dramatic inequalities in health. A 2018 report from the Public Health Agency of Canada found a 4.1-year gap in life expectancy between those living in high- versus low-income neighbourhoods, and around 11- to 12-year gaps between areas with high or low concentrations of Inuit or First Nations people.
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Season 4 of Climate and Artists free webinar series premiered with positively uplifting and inspiring stories from eight fabulous guests committed to regenerating and transforming communities creatively. Learn how…
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It comes as a surprise to many people, including health-care professionals, that the health-care system has a large ecological footprint. But as I noted last week, if the global health-care system were a country, its carbon emissions would have made it the fifth-largest emitter on the planet, according to a 2019 report from Health Care Without Harm.
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Last week, I reported on the rally at the B.C. legislature organized by Doctors for Planetary Health — West Coast. The rally was timed to coincide with the COP26, the UN’s climate-change conference in Glasgow, where, for the first time — and at the behest of the U.K. government — health was one of three science priority areas.
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Inspired in part by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who had called the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report a “Code Red for humanity,” we were there to declare a climate and ecological Code Red for B.C., noting: “The climate and ecological crisis is a health crisis. We stand in solidarity for a safe and equitable future for all living creatures and the planet.”
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Ugandan women living in poverty are greatly at risk right now due to two lockdowns in Kampala. Help me help them get back to work and create a situation where they can be financially self-sufficient and feed their families.
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Something extraordinary happened in mid-September: 231 medical journals around the world all published the same editorial, titled “Call for emergency action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity, and protect health.” Led by a group of chief editors from world-leading journals…
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The AccessBC Campaign for free prescription contraception is once again running a letter writing campaign, calling on the provincial government to fulfil their election promise to make all prescription contraception free.
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Two broad themes this week, both from recent headlines. The first is the insanity of the plans for the Olympic Games, and especially the unethical prioritization for COVID-19 immunization of elite Olympic athletes over vulnerable people and essential workers in low-income countries. The second is a couple of astonishing ideas from the fossil-fuel industry and its political supporters in the U.S.
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The physical health benefits of active transportation (walking, biking, public transit) are well known. Compared to cars, there are fewer emissions of carbon dioxide and various air pollutants per passenger mile, fewer accidents and more physical activity — I often joke that includes running for the bus.
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Fernwood Farms for Sale- Interested in living in Victoria on a large city lot that has been developed into edible landscape based on permaculture principals? There are 6 veggie beds, drip irrigation with 18 fruit and 2 nut trees + 14 types of berries
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Humans act as if we have several planets to sustain us when in reality we only have one – that’s the motive behind a new six-week series of Monday evening conversations called Re-imagining Life In A One Planet Region.
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