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When we get really sick, the first thing we do is seek help from Canada’s cherished medical care system—a system that has been stretched to the breaking point throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
That system clearly needs government support to get it back to health.
But that’s not where our story about health should end. Because our medical care system is currently geared to treating illness after the fact.
The other side of the equation—the side that can help us live longer—doesn’t involve a hospital, an emergency room, or a doctor’s office. It involves investing more on the social and ecological side of the equation.
This edition of The Monitor seeks to unpack what that would look like—to examine the social determinants of health, and propose ways that we could change our society to keep people happier and healthier, and keep our healthcare system functioning.
In it, you'll find:
- Get Well Canada founder Paul Kershaw making the argument that social and educational spending are keys to good population health.
- Andrea Long, senior director of research and knowledge mobilization at Generation Squeeze, writing about how key health policy movements are converging.
- Bridget McCann writing about how new research points towards a target ratio between health and medical spending.
- Daniel Dutton saying that health inequality is a persistent problem—and it's directly tied to other forms of inequality.
- Arman Hamidian writing about how fully half of our health and well-being is based on social determinants of health—and why that means we need to move to a whole-of-society approach to health.
- Jonathan Heller and Myrianne Richard writing about how we can influence government budgets to improve public health.
And much more. The great Tommy Douglas, founder of Canada’s public health care system, never imagined we’d focus on hospitals at the expense of all else: “the ultimate goal,” he said, “must be to keep people well rather than just patching them up when they get sick.” This edition of The Monitor seeks to outline exactly how we might do that.
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