In June, Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on MAiD recommended that Canada indefinitely exclude people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. Some disability organizations frame this as necessary to preserve the exclusion so we can keep pressure on governments to improve supports or permit eligibility and risk that pressure disappearing.
Providing gender-affirming medical care to adolescents has become one of the most heavily debated medical topics in the public sphere. Medical interventions once widely presented by most major medical groups as unequivocally beneficial and even lifesaving for young people with gender dysphoria have come under sustained scrutiny as emerging evidence has called the certainty of these claims into question and trans issues have become more politically polarizing and salient.
On July 31, 2020, my wife, Emily, took her last breath after a long battle with cancer. In that moment, the role that had consumed my life for years came to an abrupt end.
A recent article in Healthy Debate rightly drew attention to the fragmentation of Canada’s health information environment and to the burden this can place on patients, clinicians, public health and system learning. However, the issue should not be framed as if success requires a single, seamless pan-Canadian record available in every setting.
Peripheral neuropathy, the chronic nerve illness caused by conditions such as diabetes, cancer, infections and autoimmune diseases, was thought to be completely irreversible. But recent case studies suggest early onset of neuropathy has a chance to be reversed using something everyone can afford: exercise.
The “dog days of summer” offer Canadians time to disconnect from a harried life and an opportunity to reflect before reacting. Parliament is quiet, our attachment to the frenetic news cycle is unshackled and, for a few precious weeks, the yoyoing of outrage and frustration becomes a distant call of the lake loon.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, one of the most influential public health documents ever written. Adopted by delegates from 38 countries at the World Health Organization's First International Conference on Health Promotion, the Charter fundamentally transformed how we think about health by challenging the notion that health is created primarily in hospitals and clinics. Instead, it argued that health is shaped by the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age.
In 2017, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada launched Competence by Design, the most consequential reform of Canadian residency training in a generation. The premise was simple: we can define all the elements that a graduating physician should know or do in practice, and we should only graduate them when a supervisor has actually watched them do the work competently and safely. The framework broke training into discrete clinical tasks, such as managing a patient with chest pain, that a trainee must be observed performing before a supervisor signs off. Nearly a decade later, the architecture is in place. The observation is not.
Just over a year ago, the government of Ontario passed landmark legislation that puts primary care – the care most often delivered by family doctors – at the foundation of the health-care system.
The word “cancer” strikes a particular kind of fear in people’s hearts and creates a thriving market for cancer scams. If you search “cancer treatments” on Facebook (one of the first prompts that appear if you type “cancer” into the search bar), you’re immediately fed videos on alternative therapies and recommended groups discussing “natural” versus conventional cancer care.
When my mom moved across the province to be closer to her grandkids (and I like to think, me), she faced a challenge many Canadians know all too well: finding a family doctor. But once she did, she faced another problem. It turned out that some of her medical history hadn’t made the trip with her.
“Why am I not being taught this?” It’s a question Amardeep Mangat says medical learners frequently ask after rotating through his Lifestyle Medicine clinic, where they witness patients improving their chronic disease management through nutrition, exercise, sleep optimization and behavioural interventions – and sometimes deprescribing medications altogether.
The workforce pressure on our increasingly strained health-care system is not a Human Resources (HR) problem; it’s a human problem that affects every single person in the chain of care, from physicians and Personal Support Workers to the administrative teams who hold it all together.
In modern health care, we still behave as though safety is primarily a function of individual vigilance. When something goes wrong, health-care providers will instinctively ask “what could I have done differently?” instead of addressing a more uncomfortable question “how did our systems make this mistake more likely?” This is understandable as many enter the health-care profession firmly grounded in the principle of “first, do no harm.”
During a rural posting in West Africa, I once saw people at a religious centre locked up, chained to poles and subjected to harsh conditions because they were “addicted to drugs,” brought by their family members who believed they were “demon possessed” or needed “spiritual deliverance.” I remember being shocked and moved to tears at these attempts to detoxify or rehabilitate – but without evidence-based care, compassion, dignity or an understanding of the illness itself.
Hepatitis C kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year; in Canada it results in more lost years of life than any other infectious disease. An effective treatment exists, but it is unavailable to many because of cost and other access obstacles. And there is no vaccine. Canada has the researchers, the policy framework and the capacity to help change that.
In May, Ontario’s Auditor General released a special report on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Ontario government, including medical “AI scribes” that are increasingly being used by doctors, including us. While headlines and coverage focused mainly on so-called scribe hallucinations of these AI note-taking systems, that wasn’t the biggest news in the report.
Scrolling through social media, it’s easy to feel like health advice is everywhere. A creator shares a routine that “changed everything.” Another explains how they fixed their gut health. A clinician posts quick tips between patient visits. The tone is confident, personal – and above all, authentic.
Many low-income seniors are standing on the edge of a financial precipice. As family physicians and health promoters at St. Michael’s Family Health Team, we do everything we can to support our patients through these challenges. But for every person we help, thousands of others fall through the cracks with no one to catch them.
Alberta does not have to choose between recovery and harm reduction. A serious recovery-oriented system would protect both, investing in treatment beds and recovery communities, but also in the low-barrier services that keep people alive long enough to use them.
We have mapped the stars, descended into the ocean depths, yet the human brain remains one of the greatest mysteries humans have encountered.
If we are serious about improving health outcomes, particularly for populations navigating systemic barriers, creative expression should not be treated as an add-on. It should be recognized as a practical, accessible component of care.
Imagine a world where creativity is prescribed alongside medicine – where artists collaborate with doctors to heal body, mind and spirit.
For newcomer survivors of gender-based domestic violence, expressive arts are not decorative. They are a practical, culturally responsive component of recovery.
Community artists help humanize both health care and settlement experiences by creating accessible, relational entry points.
For newcomers to Canada, creativity isn’t just a pastime – it can be a lifeline.
Long emergency wait times are now widely recognized as a structural problem. But children should not deteriorate unnoticed in emergency department waiting areas.
Canadians are increasingly finding themselves in an impossible position: treatments could be approved yet remain inaccessible. Friedreich ataxia (FA) has become a powerful example of that reality.
This series is a deep dive into the lives and working conditions of health-care professionals across Canada. It includes six profiles that explore the challenges, triumphs and priorities not only of our the health-care system as a whole, but of the workers who support it.
In partnership with AMS Healthcare, Healthy Debate is publishing a series of solutions-focused articles on emerging technologies and their potential for transformational change in our health-care system.
"Togethering" is the term for how we live out our vision of how we care for our families together. "Family" can mean the traditional nuclear family across generations, modern-day chosen families, friends and neighbours. This series explores how modern families are navigating their own version of "Togethering." These three articles are the first instalments of a 10-part series examining the intersection of housing, aging and caregiving.
In partnership with AMS Healthcare, Healthy Debate is publishing a series of solutions-focused articles examining gaps in our health-care system.