Gender-diverse adults have a harder time getting effective primary and preventive health care than their nontransgender counterparts.
Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images
The human population has doubled in 48 years, and worsening climate change has left the world facing serious health risks, from infectious diseases to hunger and heat stress.
The over-the-counter birth control pill will not require medical examinations or prescriptions prior to purchase.
Sergey Mironov/Moment via Getty Images
Some states already allow pharmacists to provide birth control to patients with a prescription. But FDA approval of an over-the-counter birth control pill could greatly expand access.
The cost and profits involved in running a medical practice is everyone’s business. It can influence the type of health care you receive.
Until the government acknowledges the critical role family physicians have in population health and on easing the burden on acute hospital care, pressures will only be relieved temporarily.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
A strong primary care system keeps patients away from emergency departments and helps patients self-manage illnesses. But Ontario’s plan to ease pressure on emergency rooms ignores family medicine.
Googling symptoms to self-diagnose is not the same as virtual health care.
(Canva)
Searching symptoms online has become so common there is a name for the condition of health anxiety induced by self-diagnosis on the internet: Cyberchondria.
People inquire about receiving a monkeypox vaccine at an outdoor walk-in clinic in Montréal on July 23, 2022. The World Health Organization has declared the virus a global health emergency.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes
Engaging in open and honest dialogue with the public to increase understanding of health inequities has never been more important.
Putting patients at the centre of care means seeing them as a whole person and treating them as a partner in their journey to better health.
(Shutterstock)
Person-centred care sees the patient as a whole, unique individual and puts them at the centre of their health decisions.
A medical worker looks through the debris of a medical lab in Port-au-Prince, Haiti following an earthquake in January 2010.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Abortion funds, which help people who cannot afford the procedure, are facing new kinds of pressures, including potential legal risks and a rising client demand that exceeds their capabilities.
The price physicians charge for every surgery, checkup or other procedure has a precise formula behind it.
Morsa Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images
A health policy researcher explains how doctors determine their pay rates, and the system that lets them do it.
Anti-abortion demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court on the day the court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade abortion laws.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
After the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, will more Americans travel for abortions? Inequalities created by this controversial decision will be revealed at border points.
An image from the comic ‘Compassion’ by Kayleigh Fine, which was commissioned to illustrate the importance of compassionate care for 2SLGBTQ+ people.
(Kayleigh Fine)
Accessing compassionate health care is often difficult for Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other sexual identities, such as pansexual or asexual individuals (2SLGBTQ+).
Patient safety incidents are the third leading cause of death in Canada.
(Shutterstock)
Patient safety incidents were already a leading cause of death in Canada. With that crisis converging with the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care is being pushed to a breaking point.
Because of stigma and deeply rooted implicit bias, people who suffer chronic and unexplained pains are often characterized as complainers, malingerers and drug-seekers.
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Psychosocial and economic stressors can affect health, but neither our doctors nor our health-care system have the tools to integrate these factors into diagnoses or care. Play offers an alternative.
Hospital design shifted in the 20th century as hospitals moved from being places for treating disease and injury to being centres of health systems.
(Shutterstock)
The theory of supportive design considers
positive distraction, perceptions of control and social support.
Nurses tend to a COVID-19 patient in the intensive care unit at the Bluewater Health Hospital in Sarnia, Ont., in January 2022. The pandemic exposed the flaws in Canada’s struggling health-care system, and offers a chance for Canada to reform it if the country’s premiers step up.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
The COVID-19 pandemic presents us with a unique opportunity to rethink and reform public health care in Canada. That’s why premiers’ demands for more unconditional health-care dollars are so misguided.
Food prescriptions provide patients with vouchers that can be spent on fruits and vegetables.
(Jonathon Barraball)
Food security is crucial to disease prevention and management, so prescribing healthy foods and reducing barriers to better diets makes sense. But food prescriptions should not be immune to scrutiny.
Québec Premier François Legault defended Bill 96 saying he doesn’t want the province to become Louisiana.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
For most Québec residents, there is broad consensus that French should be protected. But many of us believe that multilingualism need not threaten French.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
Professor (adjunct) and Senior Fellow, Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto