A spotlight on World Health Day 2022
April 7, 2022 is World Health Day. The focus is our planet, our health.
Health professionals are not only health practitioners; they are also part of the health-care system, and they are citizens in their own communities, in the province, in Canada and globally. On World Health Day, physicians and other health professionals are encouraged to examine their roles and take action to ensure the health of our planet.
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Doctors for Planetary Health – West Coast
Canadian health professionals have a role to play in protecting and restoring the health of the planet, which is after all the ultimate determinant of the health of the population.
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Doctors for Planetary Health – West Coast
Our health-care system is very energy intensive and produces large volumes of solid waste and toxic waste. But this is, in fact, counter to our ethical duty to do no harm, which must include not harming the environment and the health of people and communities.
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Trevor Hancock
The theme for World Health Day reflects a growing global concern with the health impacts of massive and rapid human-driven ecological changes. While climate change is front of mind, having been recognized as “the single biggest health threat facing humanity” by the WHO as far back as 2008, the changes and challenges we face are far greater than that.
The past year has seen mounting public calls for the resignations of chief medical officers of health, either for being too power hungry or abandoning the public, depending on the complainants’ station and political bent. They are subject to attacks by opposition parties for their complicity, or abandoned by the governing party as scapegoats for policy decisions.
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Katharine Lake Berz
Once a custom practised mainly by the Lakota Indigenous tribes, sweat lodges are growing in popularity in British Columbia, cropping up on many rural properties and Indigenous lands as group gatherings and tourists promise to return now that the pandemic is receding.
The Rounds Table Podcast
The Rounds Table is a free regular podcast hosted by Healthy Debate. Its purpose is to provide an informative and irreverent discussion of new research from major medical journals. Each week it explores topics from the latest medical research.
ICYMI - Editor's Monthly Reads
Our editorial team highlights our essential reading for the month.
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Anthony Fong
Canadian emergency physician and journalist Anthony Fong describes his experience at the Ukraine-Polish border, treating Ukrainian refugees fleeing the full-scale invasion of their country.
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Lena Faust
Tuberculosis has been around for millennia and continues to circulate to this day. On World TB Day, Stop TB Canada has launched a new tracker to hold the government accountable to its elimination targets.
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Jennifer A.H. Bell
The federal government’s national $10-a-day child care program is cause for celebration. But there is a lot more that still needs to be done in both the public and private sectors to support parents post-partum.
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Anthony Fong
As many as 40 per cent of British Columbia’s family doctors may retire in the next 10 years, leaving millions in B.C. without a family doctor.
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Nakia K. Lee-Foon
Adalsteinn Brown
Unarguably, a profound weakness in our public health response to COVID-19 has been the equity-blind approach that numerous jurisdictions adopted when the pandemic began.
Special Series Highlights
In partnership with AMS Healthcare, Healthy Debate is publishing a series of seven articles that explores the relationship between technology and compassion in the field of health care today, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pillars of the Pandemic is a new series honouring outstanding individuals who have made huge contributions to our fight against the pandemic.