Month: July 2019

Contributed by: Gary Lai

The following is Part II of Gary Lai’s investigation into the link between poverty and health outcomes. Part I is available here.

Economic Inequality and Health Inequality

There is a large array of political tools to advocate for the poor in the framework of The Canada Health Act (1984). For Example, Dennis Raphael, from York University, proposed a series of actions to reduce poverty and health inequality. He cited the Health of Canada’s Children Report, which reported a deep divide between the health of children who are poor and those who are not. Statistics Canada attributes 22% of mortality differences among Canadians to income differentials. In the University of Sussex’s Richard Wilkinson’s book Unhealthy Societies, he writes, “increasing economic inequality decreases social cohesion, increases individual malaise, and produces the conditions by which increased mortality and morbidity occur.” Raphael also mentioned that the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion included income as a basic prerequisite for health. He wrote that the public, organizations, and the government could respond to a public health issue like this through recognition of the impact of politics, government policy development and implementation, and community involvement on health.

Raphael is not the only scholar advocating a political solution. Deanna Williamson, of the University of Alberta, claimed that the health of individual Canadians in poverty requires a concerted effort to alter the “fundamental structural conditions contributing to poverty.” She suggested more research in this area. Continue reading “Improving Health Outcomes through Poverty Reduction: Part II”

Contributed by: Gary Lai

Introduction

The Canada Health Act (1984) established universal health care in Canada with five principles, one of which is accessibility—insured Canadians should not be impeded from reasonable hospital and physician services. But there is ample evidence that the medical outcome of low-income people is not what was originally intended by the legislation; they are disproportionately less healthy than the rest of the population. The late sociologist and former University of Laval professor André Billette highlighted two studies that looked at health outcomes of the poor in Canada in 1979. One, led by Philip Enterline, formerly a biostatistician at the University of Pittsburgh, found that in Montreal, the poor made the most doctors’ visits. Another was by University of Ottawa’s Pran Manga, who found that, between 1974 and 1975, the lower the family income, the greater the use of all types of medical services – significantly more for members of families making under $4,000 (approximately $18,000 in 2019, when adjusted for inflation).

The lower the family income, the greater the use of all types of medical services || (Source: Flickr // Aimee Dars Ellis )