Connie Clement, Executive Director - OPC, welcoming the panelists and guests.

Canadians' #1 social concern is HEALTH.

The Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse (OPC) hosted a discussion forum "Putting the Health in Health Care"at the St Lawrence Centre Forum on 7 April 2005. The forum aimed to create awareness about the social and economic benefits of prevention and health promotion. Some of the concerns discussed were - Are we adequately funding prevention? Is the time ripe to demand that our dollars 'care about health'?

The session was moderated by Amanuel Melles, Director of Organizational Capacity Building, United Way of Greater Toronto and had three panelists. In the first part of the Session, each of the panelists made a brief 10-minute presentation, which was followed by discussions in the second half among the panelists and the audience of approximately 125.

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Presentations by the panelists

Erica Di Ruggiero, Canadian Institute of Population and Public Health addressing the gathering.

Erica Di Ruggiero
Canadian Institute of Population and Public Health, Canadian Institute of Health Research

Erica described key factors that influence our daily lives and health. She pointed to the 1974 Loland Report, the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion and more recent research think-tanks as demonstration that Canada has been a leader in health promotion on the global front. She underlined the importance of health treatment and care in our society but also stated that the healthcare system does not analyze underlying causes of diseases or highlight the importance of the determinants of health. Health of the population is greatly affected by factors such as ethnicity, income, education, gender. An in-depth analysis of these factors and their effects has shown that societies with a larger gap between the rich and the poor are less healthy. Erica described some of the associations between health and income. For instance, she cited a recent Stats Canada report showing thatpeople with low-income are more likely to become obese. Erica stressed the need to focus on the early years of life to improve health through a life-time. She identified the need for a strong "Public Health System" as crucial.

Wayne Roberts, Toronto Food Policy Council delivering his address.

Wayne Roberts
Toronto Food Policy Council, Toronto Public Health

Wayne stressed the need to analyze the unintended health costs associated with policy decisions and suggested the creation of a health auditor or the requirement to have health impact assessments. For example one-third of the advertisements on the TTC promote junk food. Rather than looking at direct TTC revenue only, a health auditor would ask how much these advertisements cost the City through negative health impact on citizens. He pointed out that our accounting system steers in the wrong direction, as we rely on gross national product (GNP) for much analysis. According to Oscar Wilde "GNP knows the cost of everything but value of nothing." It gives a zero to breast-feeding as breastfeeding does not account for any sale, while bottle-feeding is good as it contributes to the GNP. Similarly, walking generates no financial gain as it is free, while driving is a good as it adds to the GNP. In essence, we need to get our fundamentals right because if we cannot measure right, we cannot manage right either. Wayne argued for a National Account System that takes Health into account.

Norman Rowan, Regent Park Community Health Centre presenting the success story of "Pathways to education"

Norman Rowan
Pathways to Education, Regent Park Community Health Centre

To present the success story of Pathways to Education, Norman began by describing Regent Park, the oldest and largest public housing project in Canada. The community is the poorest community in the greater Toronto area with an average household income of $16,000. Two-thirds of the community are visible minorities, more than half are immigrants, 50% or less have completed high school, and less than 10% have a university degree. Norman told us how the Regent Park Community Health Centre created a new mission to help the children of the community become the Health Centre's doctors, nurses, social workers and administrators of tomorrow. Out of this vision came a program to address youth education and employment. Members of the community identified the absence of "a sense of possibility of the future" as contributing to 56% of the kids dropping out. Some of the highlights of the project, now in its fourth year, are: it is open to all kids, offers tutoring (academic), group mentoring, TTC tickets to travel to and from school, and $1000 for post secondary education (financial). He also shared some of the results in terms of decrease in absenteeism and increase in participation. This success story is very encouraging and highlights the importance of understanding and addressing social determinants of health.
 

Questions and answers were wide reaching. Audience members spoke about the impacts of poverty on health, challenged privatization and economic models and shared information on related initiatives.

Numerous participants stayed to share coffee, tea and snacks and talk together.

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