Janet Kushner-Kow

Contributor

Dr. Janet Kushner-Kow is the physician program director of elder care at Providence Health Care and division head of geriatric medicine at the University of British Columbia.

3382 Contributions
by Miranda Caley

In Toronto, she’s an infectious disease specialist. In the North, she’s Dr. Balloon

Anna Banerji is a pediatrician, an infectious disease specialist and the founder of the Indigenous Health Conference. We're profiling her as a Pillars of the Pandemic honouree.

by Shelley Allen

Social workers are essential workers, too

Throughout the pandemic, social workers have been vital, and they will be needed more than ever as we move toward recovery. It's time we recognized that social workers are essential workers too.

by Heather Bryant

Scrap the Pap

We need to switch from traditional Pap testing to oncogenic HPV screening to save hundreds of lives and prevent thousands of cases of cervical cancer. The longer we put off switching, the more we needlessly put people at risk.

by Danielle Cane Leyla Asadi Simon Smith

Actually, we do need better masks  

Canadians need masks that fit their faces more closely than cloth or surgical masks. They also need masks that are made of materials that filter better than cloth.

by Stephanie Lee

The patient as content

COVID-19 pushed doctors to the front of the cultural mainstream. But to maintain this status, some doctors share patients' medical information on social media, potentially undermining the doctor-patient relationship.

by Max Binks-Collier

How good is natural immunity?

Is the immunity that comes from having caught COVID-19 as good as the immunity from vaccination? It may well be, at least for some – but there are caveats.

by Suzanne Shoush

On this Orange Shirt Day, don’t nitpick the facts. Accept the outrage and anger.

For Orange Shirt Day, do not be tempted to nitpick facts, debate terminology or look for a silver lining. We must drop the disingenuous arguments and accept our collective history – and our present.

by A group of concerned health-care providers, scientists and researchers

An open letter to city council: We need Multi-Tenant Houses across Toronto 

Health-care providers, scientists and researchers are calling on Mayor John Tory and city councillors to regulate multi-tenant houses across Toronto on October 1st. It's time we improved this important affordable housing stock.

by Zoë Dodd Samantha Young Lisa Boucher Abeera Shahid Melanie Brown Kimia Khoee Ahmed Bayoumi

Living in encampments is more than just a pandemic issue, researchers find

Recent evictions of encampments in Toronto sparked lots of discussion, but there has been little effort to understand why they exist and what they mean to their residents. We studied these questions. Here's what we found.

by Gali Katznelson Katherine Zagrodney Mary Boulos

The need for no-cost contraception

Yesterday was World Contraception Day. Let's ensure that, by this time next year, Canadians have access to no-cost contraception. No one should have to ask, “Do I buy birth control this month, or food next week?”

by Seema Marwaha Sabina Vohra-Miller Ripudaman Singh Minhas

Breaking the cycle of racism and bias in health care

COVID-19 has laid bare racial disparities in health. Three medical professionals talk about the structural racism in health care they have seen during the pandemic – and what needs to be done to address it.

by Connie Li Arjun Pandey Rishi Bansal

Canadian medical students are embracing advocacy

The face of advocacy is changing as medical students realize they have both the power and responsibility to advocate for change within their institutions and communities.

by Nancy Olivieri

Playing games with other people’s children

Whistleblower Nancy Olivieri sees parallels between how a pharmaceutical company and the University of Toronto allegedly downplayed the risk a drug posed to kids years ago, and how the Ford government is dealing with the risk of COVID-19 to our kids now.

by Jorge A. Cruz-Aguado

No amount of rhetoric will immunize vaccine disbelievers. The virus might

This week, I voted, which is a privilege I did not have in my home country. As controversial as this untimely election has been and as thorny the issues at stake are, I was glad to see the main parties concur on one thing – unless you have a sound medical reason, get vaccinated.

by Anne Borden King

Why Peter Bryce’s legacy still matters today

Physician John O'Connor received an award honouring the legacy of Peter Bryce, a government doctor who sounded the alarm over the high death toll in residential schools. Who has the courage to be the next?

by Larry W. Chambers Madeleine Smith

Let’s invest in helping more seniors stay at home – and stay active

As the percentage of elderly Ontarians increases, we should spend more of our tax dollars not on care homes, but rather community-based services that will help seniors age at home.

by Robyn McClelland

She was jilted at the neurosurgery altar but found true love in pediatrics

A doctor reflects on her passionate romance with neurosurgery, her devastating break up on Match Day, and how she then found a soulmate in pediatric intensive care.

by A coalition of civil society organizations and individuals

Groups call on federal parties to commit to removing barriers for internationally trained health professionals

Federal party leaders must address longstanding barriers to the licensing and employment of internationally educated health professionals. Doing so would not only address inequities – it would greatly improve our health-care system.

by Iris Kulbatski

‘We are not that great’: Gain-of-function research highlights our hubris

Gain-of-function research entails modifying pathogens in ways that can make them more dangerous. The pandemic shows us what the fallout of such research could look like.

by Shelby Olesovsky

‘Please don’t blame your child’: For some parents of kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the pandemic has been challenging

For many children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the pandemic has been isolating and disorienting. For some of their parents, it has led to burnout. So how can we support these families going forward?

58 of 170