The re-emergence of vaccine-preventable illnesses is a major concern for Ontario’s public health officials. Efforts to create a national vaccine registry have stalled. A real time, comprehensive vaccine registry and surveillance system in Ontario may be the best answer to the information deficit. Faced with a measles outbreak at an elementary school, nurse Susan Otten spent …
A recent Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) Report obscurely titled Health Indicators 2012 revisits the topic of the impact of prevention on reduced mortality which was first profiled in the 1974 Lalonde Report – A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians. This caused me to go back and reread the 38 year old …
Almost a decade ago, in my mid thirties, a routine physical showed elevated liver enzymes. Follow-up tests three months later showed them rising. My doctor was diligent, and referred me to the liver clinic at Toronto Western Hospital. What followed was a year-long series of interventions, which at first were benign – lose ten pounds …
Three quarters of our daily salt intake comes from prepared and manufactured foods. Experts suggest that the most effective approach to reducing salt consumption in a population is to more actively regulate the amount of salt in prepared foods. However, there is a debate about the best strategy to curb salt intake in Canada. Does …
Salt intake is difficult for individuals to control, because more than three quarter of the salt we consume comes from processed foods, like bread, deli meats and dairy products. Most Canadians are consuming more than double the daily recommended amount of salt. While there is a link between salt consumption and heart disease and stroke, …
In my last post I explored how stress, debt, and environmental destruction seem like obvious implications of consumption. But what if too-much-stuff is also the source of physical illness? John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas Naylor brilliantly address this issue in their book Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic in their depiction of consumerism as a …
As a young person just beginning my career as a physician, it is extraordinarily overwhelming to confront the disconnect between the values that created our Medicare system and the logistics of how it has evolved. Despite those incredible challenges, I am more so struck on a daily basis in practice by the manner in which …
Living on an island where most of the locals are descendants of people who have lived here for generations has given me an interest in local history and genealogy. Many of my older patients’ parents and grandparents lived to a fine old age without the modern conveniences and medical care we take for granted today …
I see the effects of poverty everyday in my job as a health promoter at a Community Health Centre. Many of our clients live in deep poverty conditions, relying on social assistance, food banks, and meal programs to get by each month. They have little stability, living day to day, month to month in a …
Each year several thousand Canadians die from influenza. Vaccinating health care workers against flu reduces transmission and would protect patients who are most vulnerable. However, only about 40% of hospital staff in Ontario were vaccinated last winter. Is it time for Ontario to make the flu vaccine mandatory for health care workers? Explaining the influenza …
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in Ontario, and is costly to the health care system. From the 1990s into the past decade, Ontario made significant progress in reducing smoking rates. However, smoking rates are no longer declining as steeply. More aggressive action needs to be taken if Ontario wants to …
The frequency of obesity has skyrocketed across Canada, and its treatment is a major challenge to the health care system. Bariatric surgery is an effective treatment for obesity that appears to be good value for money. Although Ontario is expanding bariatric surgery capacity, some are concerned that capacity remains below current needs. What is bariatric …
Ontario’s hospitals are required to publicly report how often staff wash their hands. There is large variation in hand washing rates between hospitals. This variation more likely reflects how hospitals measure hand washing, rather than the frequency of hand washing itself. Ontario’s hospitals are required to publicly release information about how often staff wash their …