Posts Tagged ‘mental Health’
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We’re doctors. This is the glaring hole we see in our national health care conversation
Thursday, October 3rd, 2024
Eliminating out-of-pocket costs for medications used to treat diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory conditions would result in 220,000 fewer ER visits and 90,000 less hospital stays annually, saving the health care system $1.2 billion a year… Unaffordable drugs invoke worry, helplessness and dread and creates a potentially damaging dependency. Granted, it’s difficult to assign a savings to the emotional costs currently being paid, but it’s intellectually dishonest to not even mention them.
Tags: disabilities, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, pharmaceutical, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Health Debates | No Comments »
Doug Ford wants to stop doctors from handing out clean needles. Here’s why they shouldn’t listen
Monday, September 16th, 2024
The government’s plans include prohibiting provincially funded community health centres with consumption services from distributing clean needles and providing safer supply of opioids and other prescriptions. The government alleges that needle distribution and safer supply threaten community safety and are ineffective ways to treat substance dependent people. The government is wrong on both counts… public health is protected by providing clean needles… and the prescribing of opioids reduces overdose-related mortality.
Tags: Health, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
I’ve used a Toronto supervised consumption site for a year. What it’s really like in these facilities Doug Ford is bent on shuttering
Wednesday, September 4th, 2024
The Queen West site provided me with more than a place to safely use drugs. The staff provided medical attention when I needed it, food and snacks when I was hungry, water and juice when I was thirsty, a sympathetic ear and a hug when I despaired. Through them, I was connected with a phenomenal support worker from Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre… They have been my advocate and biggest supporter. With their help, obstacles that seemed insurmountable have vanished.
Tags: Health, ideology, mental Health, pharmaceutical
Posted in Health Debates | 1 Comment »
Dementia risk factors identified in new global report are all preventable – addressing them could reduce dementia rates by 45%
Sunday, August 18th, 2024
… our team proposed an ambitious program for preventing dementia that could be implemented at the individual, community and policy levels and across the life span… The key points include: In early life, improving general education. In midlife, addressing hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, depression, traumatic brain injury, physical inactivity, diabetes, smoking, hypertension, obesity and excessive alcohol. In later life, reducing social isolation, air pollution and vision loss.
Tags: mental Health, participation, Seniors, standard of living
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Nearly half of dementia cases can be prevented or delayed, a major new study suggests. Here’s how
Friday, August 2nd, 2024
We need policymakers to take a “population health approach” to preventing dementia… That includes ensuring equitable access to community services, such as group exercise programs, and medical devices… hearing aids, for example… Livingston’s team outlined 13 population-level recommendations for policymakers, addressing each of dementia’s 14 modifiable risk factors.
Tags: disabilities, economy, Health, mental Health, Seniors, standard of living
Posted in Health Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario expanding jails by several hundred beds to deal with overflowing institutions
Tuesday, June 11th, 2024
As of September 30, 2023, there was an average of 8,889 people in provincial jails, well over the 7,848-person capacity. Overall, the jails were operating at 113 per cent capacity at that time. Premier Doug Ford pledged in March to build more jails to deal with an influx of inmates, the vast majority of whom are innocent and awaiting trial. Ontario will reopen two intermittent detention centres inside Toronto and London jails that had been closed in order to add up to 430 beds by 2026.
Tags: corrections, crime prevention, mental Health
Posted in Child & Family Delivery System | No Comments »
Province urged to take time to rethink flawed post-secondary education bill
Friday, May 10th, 2024
Bill 166 is being touted as a potential law to improve transparency and student mental health, and to combat racism and hate on the province’s post-secondary campuses… The provincial government is using a manufactured crisis as an excuse for increased ill-informed ministerial interference… What we do need is a real solution to the real crisis created by government through more than a decade of funding cuts and squeezes.
Tags: jurisdiction, mental Health, multiculturalism
Posted in Education Policy Context | No Comments »
Ontario pays $320K in legal fight over its cancellation of basic income program
Monday, April 22nd, 2024
After battling five years against a class-action certification process, the Ontario government has paid $320,000 to the law firm spearheading a lawsuit against the Ford government over its decision to cancel a guaranteed basic income pilot project… One-third of respondents reported that the pilot gave them enough money to go to school. One in five said it funded their transportation to work. Almost three-quarters said they started eating better and nearly three in five said they managed to improve their housing. A large majority felt less stress, anxiety and depression.
Tags: ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, participation, poverty
Posted in Social Security History | No Comments »
Cutting ER wait times? There’s an app for that
Saturday, March 30th, 2024
One prescription for improving the health of the urgent care sector: AI and virtual emergency departments are cutting wait times in the real ones… Researchers programmed AI into an app to determine which patients are most urgently in need of care… [plus] online emergency department bookings… with a list of criteria to determine if their condition allows for a short wait before receiving care… [and the use of] data points to boost staff at more demanding times.
Tags: mental Health, standard of living
Posted in Health Delivery System | No Comments »
The perverse logic of social assistance
Monday, March 4th, 2024
In Ontario, single adults who are unhoused… receive $343 per month for basic needs, and $0 for shelter. That works out to about $11 per day. No one can say with a straight face that $11 per day is a program designed to help people. How is it possible for someone to get by, let alone to get back on their feet, with so little? … It doesn’t function to bolster their well-being, or stop them from falling further into poverty. Instead, it responds to a person who has lost their home by making their life even harder.
Tags: featured, homelessness, ideology, jurisdiction, mental Health, participation, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Social Security Debates | No Comments »