February 2012
10 posts
immigrantchildren.ca » Blog Archive » The Drummond... →
The Commission rightfully relied on a careful examination of the literature in addition to its consultations. The literature findings, including Mr. Drummond’s own work, clearly sees the value of a system of high quality early learning and child care as an employment support and a support to integration of newcomers, but it failed to include child care as a recommendation to the people of...
Rise in life expectancy is marred by widening... →
A few things that inequality causes | Inequalities →
I thought this week I’d summarise four that particularly caught my eye. They variously cover crime, the family burden of caring for children with special needs, self-perception, and intergenerational mobility – which if nothing else, tells you that people with a lot of different interests are doing this kind of research…
ASSEMBLY OF FIRST NATIONS | Assembly of First... →
“Equity for our children is a first imperative and necessary to create safety, security and to ensure our children have the opportunity to succeed,” said AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo, who attended this morning’s hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. “First Nations must have access to human rights mechanisms for basic services. We must end discrimination and...
The Need to Feel Connected - Neil Wagner - Health... →
But it’s not how rich or poor your social network actually is that seems to make the most difference, it’s how well-connected you think you are that seems to be the driving force. And according to this study, people need to feel connected to the strangers in their life so much that being ignored, even by a stranger, hurts.
Toronto News: Metcalf Foundation study: working... →
According to the report, the region’s working poor are almost twice as likely to be employed in sales and service jobs than the rest of the working-age population, and they work just as much. Almost three out of four are immigrants, and almost half are single or lone parents. More than half have some post-secondary education, about the same as the average Canadian worker. Almost 60 per cent are...
The poor in Toronto: They’re working but not... →
The Metcalf Foundation study, the first of its kind in Canada, documents the changing face of the Toronto area’s workforce. And it isn’t pretty: Even during times of economic prosperity, from 2000 to 2005, the number of working people unable to make ends meet grew by 42 per cent in the Toronto area. The exacerbation was especially pronounced in the city’s transit-starved east end. But rates grew...
Breastfeeding support: Toronto Public health aims... →
“The aim is to support mothers to breastfeed as long as they wish to,” said Olga Jovkovic, healthy families manager at TPH. She’s spearheading Toronto’s efforts to get the baby-friendly designation.
Designs on equality | NOW Magazine →
The operative phrase is “universal design,” and the idea is to cease and desist creating public infrastructure that privileges one particular group, whether it’s car drivers, the able-bodied or those with paycheques, and start envisioning people with parallel but not identical mobility and sociability needs: children, teens, seniors, new immigrants, those on low incomes, parents, those with...
Inequality, mobility, opportunity « Consider the... →
Nations with lower income inequality tend to have more intergenerational mobility, and the association is quite strong. There are concerns about the data. But suppose the data are accurate, and suitable for testing this link. What does the association depicted in this chart tell us about the magnitude of inequality’s impact?
January 2012
26 posts
BBC News - UN panel aims for 'a future worth... →
Growing inequality, environmental decline and “teetering” economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes
Documenting the New Generation of Health Problems... →
A provocative new 4-hour series soon to air on public television, Designing Healthy Communities, examines the impact of our built environment on key public health indices, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, cancer and depression. The series documents the connection between bad community design and burgeoning health consequences, and discusses the remedies available to fix what has...
Nope, independent work isn’t behind rising... →
Last week we highlighted a piece in Canadian magazine Maclean’s that explored the question of whether the rise of independent work was contributing to rising income inequality. And while I argued that it was pretty hard to see how independent work rather than government policy and the globalization of the evolution of tech was the root cause of increasing inequality, the post closed by pondering...
Calculating gender equity's universal benefits -... →
Do boys lose out when girls start to do better in math? Do girls’ successes lead to a “boy crisis”? An important new study says the answer is a definitive no. When girls do better in society, both sexes benefit. Gender equity is good for everybody.
Infographic visualizes rising income inequality in... →
Income inequality has been getting worse in Canada, rising at a faster pace than it has been in the U.S. The inequality is being driven by what’s happening at the very top of the income spectrum: the richest of the rich are breaking away from the rest of us. CCPA’s latest infographic illustrates some of these stark disparities.
Better Health is Worth 0.5% -... →
Ontario is facing a health care crisis - one that is preventable. It’s not too late to make your voice heard and tell the Ontario government that better health is worth 0.5% of the budget.
Income Inequality is Bad for Society. Really Bad.... →
Wilkinson and Pickett offer transnational research showing how, exactly, income inequality is related to bad outcomes on average. In other words, as SocProf puts it, ”…egalitarianism is not a bleeding heart’s wet dream but rather the only rational course of action in terms of public policy.” The 11 graphs, available at the Equality Trust website, speak for themselves.
PLoS ONE: Social Determinants of Health and... →
Conclusions Although there were some limitations, the current study provides initial evidence of the importance of SDH in depression. Findings indicate that social inequity and the role of policy action emphasized by SDH should be considered high priorities when addressing the issue of depression. In addition, cell-to-society and pill-to-policy approaches should be encouraged in the future.
CHNET-Works! - Understanding social determinants... →
The bad news is that it’s still difficult. The good news, showing that an increasing number of people are beginning to ‘get it,’ comes from two medical journal articles that appeared around the time of the UN High-level Meeting on Non-communicable diseases in September, 2011.
The Sandbox Project - Report calls for improved... →
Toronto, January 19, 2012 – Community organizations are coming together today to discuss findings from a new report that suggest better coordination across the sector could improve social interaction and development for youth and children with disabilities. The report reiterates the need for children and youth with disabilities and their families to have a sense of community and suggests that...
Medical News: Playtime Is More than Fun and Games... →
In an environment where academic achievement is sometimes stressed at the expense of recess and other opportunities for playtime, children living in poverty may have the most to lose, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
CHNET-Works! - It's all about priorities: How to... →
CHNET-Works! - It's all about priorities: How to... →
Recreational Play Can Be Far More Important Than... →
Many urban schools have replaced recess and purely recreational after-school activities with academic enrichment activities to help close the academic achievement gaps between lower-income children and their more privileged peers. While improved academics is an important goal, the report emphasizes that the developmental role of play should not be forgotten and the benefits of play should...
Why Some Cities Are Healthier Than Others - Arts &... →
Using regression analysis to more precisely isolate the effect of various geographic factors and variables, we find that smoking is most closely associated with human capital and the creative class. Obesity, on the other hand, is most closely associated with the working class, being significantly higher in metros with more working class jobs. Commuting patterns also play a key role. Higher...
How To Make a City Healthy - Commute - The... →
As things have evolved, the Pillars were precursors of a sort to what the Institute now calls “8 Dimensions of a Healing City.” Here is the current list, with some excerpts from the website’s somewhat longer discussion of each:
Whole communities – “Does your community support your needs as a whole human being by providing convenient and comfortable opportunities for...
Power and privilege in Saskatoon and Toronto:... →
As Chief Medical Health Officer for Saskatoon Health Region, Neudorf has steered the prairie city to a broad public buy-in for attacking poverty. He has moved the discussion of public health from personal behaviours towards a recognition of the systemic and policy barriers which can keep groups of the region’s residents in poverty.
Toronto News: Budget cuts are health-care cuts,... →
Axing or reducing funding to HIV and drug prevention programs, recreation centres, community health centres, shelter services and Wheel-Trans for some dialysis patients is going to create significant health consequences
Study of the Day: Employees With Flexible Work... →
Arrangements that give workers more freedom with their time and location also enable them to take better care of themselves. As Moen puts it in a news release, “Emphasizing actual results can create a work environment that fosters healthy behavior and well-being.”
Winner of $50,000 health prize calls for new... →
Dr. Blair, whose research focuses on the link between physical activity and life-long health, told an audience of about 200 people at MaRS that inactivity is the biggest public health problem of the 21st century. And he wants to see more of the public discourse about healthy living focus on exercise – rather than obesity.
Affluent Children Are More Physically Fit Than... →
An analysis of state data by The Bay Citizen revealed a large variation in how fifth graders in Bay Area elementary schools perform on the test. The schools that performed the best have few students from low-income families, for reasons that experts say are not surprising. At Sycamore Valley Elementary, in an affluent suburban community, not a single student was eligible to receive a free or...
Understanding Social Prejudice - Alice G. Walton -... →
something as simple as feeling safe can help counter prejudice, and may offer an alternative to campaigns to reduce prejudice by characterizing it as undesirable behavior, since these appear to backfire.
Diabetes in Canada: Parts of the story - Health as... →
“We noted a striking mismatch,” the authors concluded, “between areas of Toronto where healthy resources were most needed and where they were located.”
How one woman is trying to change native people’s... →
She believes a big obstacle is that the health-care system wasn’t designed specifically with aboriginals in mind. Native Canadians have a distinct culture in which elders pass on vital information about parenting; midwives, rather than hospital-based doctors, help birth children; and age-old traditions play a major role. Combining those aspects of aboriginal culture with health-care services...
Hospital study looks at frequency of cardiac... →
To figure out why these trends appeared, Ms. Allan and her team are looking at factors that may contribute to a higher risk of cardiac arrest, such as income and education. They discovered higher levels of education and higher incomes in a neighbourhood correlated with a lower risk of cardiac arrest. But they want to know what other factors could contribute to this trend and are currently...
Blessings from schizophrenia? Believe me, they... →
I realized I’m tired of the silence around mental illness. I’m tired of contributing to the stigma by hiding the reality that these patients are our sisters and brothers, our parents, our closest friends – the ones in our lives whom we love but don’t know how to reach out to.
December 2011
11 posts
Canada News: Minimum wage hike key to cutting... →
“The government says the best route out of poverty is a job,” says Deena Ladd of the Workers’ Action Centre, a non-profit, worker-based organization. “But people working full time earning minimum wage are still having trouble paying the bills.”
A new agenda focused on health and community... →
As Susan Detzer says in her introduction: “new tools can help focus attention and frame decision making on the health-promoting potential of community investment measures,” including so-called “health impact assessments”).
Historical Trauma, American Indians, and Health →
One difference noted between Holocaust, other trauma survivors, and American Indians is that for American Indians “[t]here has been no ‘safe place’ to begin again”. In other words, catastrophic group traumas such as the Holocaust, had a beginning and an end. The survivors and descendants are dealing with the repercussions. However, for many in Indian Country, historical and contemporaneous...
First snow, and a New York state of mind →
…local and regional public health units can become actively engaged in debates about issues far outside their ‘silos’. The coming of winter tells us that they can start with thoroughly mundane questions of servicing priorities: is one more plowing of arterial roads really more important than clearing sidewalks of snow and ice in neighbourhoods where seniors live and which...
Le diabète au Canada : Perspective de santé... →
Diabetes in Canada: Facts and figures from a... →
Chicago Asks Students to Help It Be More... →
Health Behaviors Do Not Explain the Growing... →
Two visual thoughts | Inequalities →
Produit : Coup d'oeil sur la santé →
Ont. urged to set clear goals for disease... →
Dr. Arlene King made the recommendation in her annual report, saying the province needs to set clear goals for every health benefit it wants to achieve. She’s also urging Ontario to apply a “health lens” to every program and policy to clarify the potential impact of everything the province does.
November 2011
26 posts
For healthy people, build a healthy city - The... →
Ignorance is bliss when it comes to challenging... →
The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
Canada News: Ottawa lacks plan to fight child... →
Since Campaign 2000’s first report in 2001, the Canadian economy has more than doubled. But the incomes of the country’s poorest 20 per cent of families have remained stagnant, the report notes.