Primary Care

The quiet commercialization of primary care records

An emerging model is quietly turning Canadian patient medical records, and patients themselves, into lucrative commercial assets – often without patients' explicit knowledge or consent.

Where two worlds meet: The importance of cultural sensitivity in medicine

"I felt not like a physician but more like an interpreter – not of language, but of the space between two worlds: Western medicine and the cultural practices that shaped Lakshmi and Prakash’s life."

‘When doctors stop talking, patients fall apart’

When care is fragmented, patients become the glue holding the system together. We carry test results from one office to another, retell our histories again and again, and hope that someone will connect the dots before something important is missed.

The colonial wounds on Indigenous women’s health

To improve Indigenous women’s health, there must be a drastic change to the health-care system and how we view health.

‘A lot of work to do, one conversation at a time’: New Year’s resolutions for 2026

With changes reverberating throughout our health-care system, we wanted to know what health-care experts planned to focus on for themselves in the year ahead.

Medicine can be better: A wish list for our health-care system

Health Debate editor-in-chief, Dr. Seema Marwaha, shares her wishes for Canada's health-care system as a general internist, educator, journalist and incoming president-elect of the Federation of Medical Women of Canada.

The accidental birth tourist: A North American pregnancy

When baby is old enough to know the full story, I cannot wait to share how life was up north, in a place known for its warmth as much as for its cold, that welcomed an American like me without a plan.

Leadership lessons from a pot of flowers: Reawakening health-care leadership

Health care collapse is only one story. The deeper story lives underground, in the quiet places where resilience begins.

Smith has kept doctors and dollars in Alberta – but it doesn’t change access to care 

Alberta’s model may offer useful insight into whether a province can strengthen its public system by formally incorporating private activity rather than resisting it.

Queering the curriculum: Sexual orientation and gender identity in Canadian comprehensive sexuality education

Comprehensive sexual education plays a vital role in equipping young people with knowledge about their bodies, identities, rights and relationships. But access remains uneven across the country.

Living with stage 4 lobular breast cancer: What I want you to know

Lobular breast cancer is different. Vigilance matters. And stage 4 does not erase the possibility of hope or joy.

Using ‘integration’ to silence culturally specific care

When culturally specific care is allowed to vanish under another name, we all lose a piece of the commons we rely on.

One collective voice: Family doctors must speak up to protect our profession

Canadian family medicine is standing on a knife’s edge. We, as family doctors, need to decide our future.

Ontario has a new way of measuring how hard family doctors work. What does it mean for doctors and their patients?

The new “Continuity of Care” measure included in the new agreement between the Ontario government and its doctors has good intentions but comes with severe penalties and without necessary checks and balances.

The training gap undermining Canada’s primary care teams

While family medicine is exploring how to prepare doctors for team-based primary care, other health professions lack equivalent training requirements.

Empowering pharmacists is about more than saving emergency departments – it’s about equity in health care

Not only did Ontario's move to allow pharmacists to prescribe for certain minor ailments reduce ED strain, but it also reduced inequities in access to care.

We are taught to fix the system – then forced to waste time in it

Every year, medical students across the country must resubmit the same forms verifying their vaccine history. Redundant paperwork like this is a symptom of a system which bureaucracy overrides basic logic.

Black mistrust is logical and rational: What public health policymakers must learn from Black communities

Black communities are not hesitant just for the sake of it. They are hesitant because of memory. They need structural change built from trust, not just crisis.

Rethinking mental health and substance use health solutions

What if you or someone you know needs mental health and substance use health care right now? Do you know exactly where to go to get what you need?

We can no longer afford the wrong leadership for our medical organizations

Choose leaders for what they can do, not where they come from. The right competencies will carry the profession – and the health system – forward.