Public Health / en Rebuilding public trust after COVID-19: 老司机直播 experts review law, ethics and policymaking /news/rebuilding-public-trust-after-covid-19-u-t-experts-review-law-ethics-and-policymaking <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Rebuilding public trust after COVID-19: 老司机直播 experts review law, ethics and policymaking</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-10/20230919_142339-crop.jpg?h=65fedc26&amp;itok=EbM0g0oz 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2023-10/20230919_142339-crop.jpg?h=65fedc26&amp;itok=qtW7YLrg 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2023-10/20230919_142339-crop.jpg?h=65fedc26&amp;itok=5oYMJo3G 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-10/20230919_142339-crop.jpg?h=65fedc26&amp;itok=EbM0g0oz" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2023-10-13T10:08:09-04:00" title="Friday, October 13, 2023 - 10:08" class="datetime">Fri, 10/13/2023 - 10:08</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item"><p><em>Trudo Lemmens, a professor in 老司机直播鈥檚 Faculty of Law, is co-leading&nbsp;a study about the impact of COVID-19 public health measures on disadvantaged communities (photo by Nina Haikara)</em></p> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/nina-haikara" hreflang="en">Nina Haikara</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/covid-19" hreflang="en">COVID-19</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/equity" hreflang="en">Equity</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-law" hreflang="en">Faculty of Law</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Disability rights, disability justice and disability advocacy have been an increasing focus of&nbsp;<strong>Trudo Lemmens鈥檚</strong> research 鈥 particularly in the wake of COVID-19.</p> <p>鈥淭he recent COVID-19 pandemic revealed again how various measures and policies often uniquely impact on persons with disabilities,鈥 says Lemmens, a University of Toronto Faculty of Law professor who holds the Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy with cross-appointments to 老司机直播鈥檚&nbsp;Temerty Faculty of Medicine,&nbsp;Dalla Lana School of Public Health&nbsp;and&nbsp;Joint Centre for Bioethics.</p> <p>鈥淭he voices of disabled persons were largely ignored, and the disability community was not meaningfully involved in the decision-making process.鈥</p> <p>Lemmens and co-principal investigator <strong>Alison Thompson</strong>, an associate professor and a bioethicist at 老司机直播鈥檚&nbsp;Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, as well as former members of the COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, are leading a global interdisciplinary study on 鈥淩ebuilding public trust after COVID-19: Examining public health measures and their impacts on disadvantaged communities.鈥</p> <p>Their research, supported by the <a href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/nfrf-fnfr/special/2022/competition-concours-eng.aspx">Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council鈥檚 (SSHRC)&nbsp;New Frontiers in Research Fund&nbsp;for post-pandemic recovery</a>, aims to shed light on the challenges faced by disadvantaged communities during the pandemic and provide insights to rebuild public trust and address health disparities.</p> <p>鈥淰iruses don鈥檛 discriminate, societies do,鈥 says Thompson, who has worked on ethics and policymaking issues both nationally and internationally and was a member of the&nbsp;Ontario COVID-19 Bioethics Advisory Table.</p> <p>鈥淲e need to listen to persons living with disabilities, for example, about how their concerns can be better addressed, and how policy processes can be made more inclusive and responsive to the needs of people who are disproportionately harmed because of pre-existing, unjust social conditions.鈥</p> <figure role="group" class="caption caption-drupal-media align-center"> <div> <div class="field field--name-field-media-image field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="lazy" src="/sites/default/files/styles/scale_image_750_width_/public/2023-10/alison_thompson_feature.jpg?itok=Li3_sVJb" width="750" height="563" alt="&quot;&quot;" class="image-style-scale-image-750-width-"> </div> </div> <figcaption><em>Alison Thompson (supplied image)</em></figcaption> </figure> <p>Their post-pandemic recovery research is born in part out of earlier work by the project's team members, including&nbsp;Deborah Stienstra, a professor of political science and director of the Life Work Well Research Centre at the University of Guelph, and Kevin Bardosh, an applied medical anthropologist at the University of Washington. The work was also informed by policy discussions on clinical triage policies with the <a href="https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en" target="_blank">Ontario Human Rights Commission</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://archdisabilitylaw.ca/" target="_blank">ARCH Disability Rights Centre</a>, and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aodaalliance.org/" target="_blank">AODA Alliance&nbsp;</a>(Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Alliance).</p> <p>Stienstra鈥檚 report, 鈥淐onsistently excluded: A disability inclusion analysis of Canada鈥檚 COVID-19 policies,鈥 was featured during the Faculty of Law鈥檚 ongoing&nbsp;<a href="https://www.law.utoronto.ca/scholarship-publications/workshops-and-seminars/health-law-ethics-and-policy-seminar-series">Health Law, Policy &amp; Ethics Seminar Series</a>, which was organized by Lemmens.</p> <p>Another seminar featured the collaborative research paper 鈥 鈥淭he Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Policy: Why Mandates, Passports, and Segregated Lockdowns May Cause more Harm than Good鈥 鈥 written by Bardosh, Lemmens, and others involved in the new project.&nbsp;A recording of the discussion for "Unintended Consequences"&nbsp;has since received more than 77,000 YouTube views.</p> <p>鈥淓xperts have been recommending development of pandemic policies for a long time 鈥 since SARS-CoV [severe acute respiratory syndrome] in Ontario 鈥 and still it appears we were unprepared and failed to have equitable policies in place,鈥 Lemmens says.</p> <p>He adds that other countries introduced different measures and policies during COVID-19 and that we can learn from various approaches.&nbsp;Fernando Aith, a visiting professor of health law at University of S茫o Paulo, is part of the research team that will be exploring Brazil鈥檚 approaches.</p> <p>鈥淏razil had one of the highest COVID-19 fatality rates in the world. Denialism, mistaken political and administrative decisions, lack of co-ordination between the different Brazilian federative entities, stand out among the problems faced throughout the pandemic, which killed more than 700,000 people in the country,鈥 says Aith.</p> <p>鈥淎 comparative study between Brazil-Canada will allow us to understand the similarities and differences of these countries in confronting the pandemic, and thus consolidate strategic knowledge to prevent future public health emergencies."</p> <p>Lemmens says public health policy has traditionally emphasized the importance of building, strengthening, and maintaining public trust. To that end, researchers will explore how&nbsp;the implementation or absence of&nbsp;different measures, such as testing strategies, vaccine and mask mandates, clinical triage policies and public health communication have influenced public trust 鈥 particularly between already disadvantaged communities, health authorities and other institutions such as universities.</p> <p>鈥淥ur research is built on this premise that trust is key to promote public health in the long-term and to ensure compliance with public health measures,鈥 Lemmens says. 鈥淏ut during the pandemic, measures and policies 鈥 often of a rights-restrictive nature&nbsp;鈥 were implemented&nbsp;or withdrawn&nbsp;without discussion with those particularly affected.鈥</p> <p>He says it can be argued that the seriousness and urgency of the public health threat may have hindered elaborate consultation, but stresses that the need for inclusion in decision-making is a must.</p> <p>鈥淚n our research, we want to explore what the impact is on how governments, health-care institutions and universities acted during the pandemic, and whether things could have been done differently, particularly from a disability justice perspective. We want to come up with more inclusive public health governance approaches,鈥 he says.&nbsp;</p> <p>鈥淐ould we design an advisory committee structure that involves more stakeholders from the disability community, racialized minorities, Indigenous Peoples and those living in poverty? How would such a different governance structure function during a pandemic?鈥</p> <p>By examining the intersection of public health policies and societal factors, the project can help inform future policymaking and public health interventions.</p> <p>鈥淲e shouldn鈥檛 too quickly turn the page and move on as if everything went well,鈥&nbsp;says Lemmens. 鈥淲e need to learn from our experiences.鈥</p> <div class="align-center"> <div class="field field--name-field-media-oembed-video field--type-string field--label-hidden field__item"><iframe src="/media/oembed?url=https%3A//youtu.be/QjUskKTq_Qc%3Ffeature%3Dshared&amp;max_width=0&amp;max_height=0&amp;hash=ti7Q1Uo-4WwZrK7y_edZaFo_oQaU2PgbFHNOunSlUJ4" width="200" height="113" class="media-oembed-content" loading="eager" title="The Unintended Consequences of COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: Why They May Cause More Harm than Good"></iframe> </div> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 13 Oct 2023 14:08:09 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 303458 at Research shows how boosting immune memory could help develop improved flu vaccine /news/research-shows-how-boosting-immune-memory-could-help-develop-improved-flu-vaccine <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Research shows how boosting immune memory could help develop improved flu vaccine</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-05/YeungKaren-crop_0.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=UE518pJm 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2023-05/YeungKaren-crop_0.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=4k1uMyW_ 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2023-05/YeungKaren-crop_0.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=_NJoB-D4 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-05/YeungKaren-crop_0.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=UE518pJm" alt="Karen Yeung"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>siddiq22</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2023-05-11T16:33:55-04:00" title="Thursday, May 11, 2023 - 16:33" class="datetime">Thu, 05/11/2023 - 16:33</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item"><p>PhD student Karen Yeung is one of the recipients of the inaugural EPIC Doctoral Awards for her work on boosting immune memory to enhance protection against influenza (supplied photo)</p> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/betty-zou" hreflang="en">Betty Zou</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/breaking-research" hreflang="en">Breaking Research</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/emerging-and-pandemic-infections-consortium" hreflang="en">Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6906" hreflang="en">EPIC</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/awards" hreflang="en">Awards</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/graduate-students" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/immunology" hreflang="en">Immunology</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/vaccines" hreflang="en">Vaccines</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><strong>Karen Yeung</strong>&nbsp;is no stranger to outbreaks of respiratory infections. As a child growing up in Hong Kong, she&nbsp;lived through the first SARS outbreak&nbsp;in 2003 and witnessed the city dealing with repeated threats of bird flu in the years that followed.</p> <p>Twenty years later, in the midst of a global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2, the&nbsp;fourth-year PhD student in the&nbsp;<a href="https://immunology.utoronto.ca/" role="link">department of immunology</a>&nbsp;at the University of Toronto's&nbsp;<a href="https://temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/" role="link">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a>&nbsp;is leading critical research to understand how our immune systems respond to influenza infection 鈥&nbsp;and how we might be able to leverage that knowledge to create a long-lasting, universal flu vaccine.</p> <p>Yeung is one of&nbsp;<a href="https://epic.utoronto.ca/research/funded-initiatives/results-of-the-2023-doctoral-awards-competition/" role="link">31 recipients of the inaugural Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) Doctoral Awards</a>, which supports outstanding students pursuing infectious disease research.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">鈥淐urrent flu vaccines work by inducing an antibody response against a specific component of the influenza virus, but this viral component mutates very quickly every year. This means that the antibodies that you make against this year鈥檚 flu vaccine likely won鈥檛 match the strain of flu that we鈥檒l see next season,鈥 says Yeung, who is supervised by <strong>Tania Watts</strong>, a professor of immunology at 老司机直播 who holds the Canada Research Chair in anti-viral immunity.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Immune cells called memory CD8+ T cells might hold the key to unlocking broad protection against multiple flu strains. These immune cells retain a memory of a pathogen long after the initial infection, which allows the body to quickly mount a powerful immune response the next time it encounters that pathogen. And unlike the antibodies generated from a flu vaccine, memory T cells recognize parts of the influenza virus that are more likely to remain unchanged between strains and from one year to another.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">Previous work from Watts鈥 lab was the first to show that a protein receptor on CD8+ T cells called 4-1BB is an important player in the formation of memory T cells after a flu infection. 4-1BB is part of a communications cascade that relays cues to regulate the immune system. Yeung鈥檚 doctoral research aims to uncover how this pathway is turned on to produce memory CD8+ T cells.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">鈥淲e鈥檙e really interested in how cells can communicate to each other through the language of receptors like 4-1BB and signaling,鈥 Yeung says.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">鈥淲hen you have a lung infection due to flu, what kinds of signals are the CD8+ T cells receiving in the lungs that are helping them transition to memory T cells? How can we manipulate these mechanisms to form more of these memory cells?鈥</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">So far Yeung鈥檚 work points to monocytes 鈥 a type of immune cell that is recruited to the lungs early on during an infection 鈥 as providing the activating signal to allow more CD8+ T cells to become memory cells. Next, she鈥檒l be looking at what happens during a secondary flu infection if 4-1BB signaling is disrupted and there are fewer protective memory T cells.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">By deepening the understanding of how immune memory develops, Yeung鈥檚 research 鈥 which is funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research 鈥 is laying the groundwork for new approaches that could complement existing flu vaccine strategies to elicit a broader and longer-lasting immune response.</p> <p style="margin-bottom:11px">鈥淚t takes us closer towards a universal flu vaccine strategy, where one shot will be enough to protect against seasonal influenza and future influenza pandemics as well.鈥</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 11 May 2023 20:33:55 +0000 siddiq22 301624 at Lessons learned during Ebola crisis can help manage Marburg outbreak: 老司机直播 expert /news/lessons-learned-during-ebola-crisis-can-help-manage-marburg-outbreak-u-t-expert <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Lessons learned during Ebola crisis can help manage Marburg outbreak: 老司机直播 expert</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/52732945838_6866e29e5f_o-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=AuReidQ4 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/52732945838_6866e29e5f_o-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=8eStJ1og 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/52732945838_6866e29e5f_o-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=AkOQKjcI 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/52732945838_6866e29e5f_o-crop.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=AuReidQ4" alt="marburg virus particles"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2023-03-23T11:08:31-04:00" title="Thursday, March 23, 2023 - 11:08" class="datetime">Thu, 03/23/2023 - 11:08</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">A colourized transmission electron micrograph of two Marburg Virus particles (image courtesy of NIAID)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/betty-zou" hreflang="en">Betty Zou</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/emerging-and-pandemic-infections-consortium" hreflang="en">Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6906" hreflang="en">EPIC</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/world-health-organization" hreflang="en">World Health Organization</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>Earlier this year, Equatorial Guinea declared its first outbreak of Marburg virus disease, with 11 confirmed deaths so far.</p> <p>The&nbsp;Marburg virus 鈥&nbsp;a rare but severe hemorrhagic fever which affects both people and non-human primates 鈥&nbsp;belongs to the same family of viruses as Ebola. The disease presents with similar symptoms, including high fever, diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramping, and occasionally severe bleeding.</p> <p><strong><a href="https://theta.utoronto.ca/robert-fowler-md-ms-frcpc">Rob Fowler</a></strong>, a critical care physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and a professor in the&nbsp;department of medicine&nbsp;at the&nbsp;Temerty Faculty of Medicine&nbsp;at the University of Toronto,&nbsp;volunteered with the World Health Organization (WHO) on the frontlines of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 and in&nbsp;Congo in 2018.&nbsp;In 2021, he&nbsp;co-chaired the <a href="https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-global-guideline-development-group-for-therapeutics-for-ebola-virus-disease">WHO guideline development group</a> that published&nbsp;the first guidelines for Ebola virus disease therapeutics.</p> <p>He recently spoke with writer <strong>Betty Zou</strong> at the 老司机直播-based&nbsp;<a href="https://epic.utoronto.ca/">Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium</a>&nbsp;(EPIC) about the recent Marburg outbreak and what lessons health professionals can&nbsp;learn&nbsp;from the prior&nbsp;Ebola crisis to help manage this infectious disease.</p> <hr> <p><strong>What do we know about Marburg virus and how it鈥檚 transmitted?</strong></p> <p>Marburg is typically spread from an animal reservoir to other animals or to humans. When it gets into humans, there can be human-to-human spread through direct contact. The direct contact is often through bodily secretions, such as someone vomiting, having diarrhea or bleeding.</p> <p>Once the virus gets onto a person鈥檚 hands, it can enter the body through mucus membranes like your eyes or the inside of your nose and mouth. In rare instances, we鈥檝e seen health-care workers get infected through a needle-stick or sharps injury in the skin that allows the virus to directly enter the blood. And very, very rarely, people have found residual virus in certain bodily fluids that evade the immune response after the acute infectious phase has passed.</p> <p><strong>How did you react when you first found out that the cluster of people who died of suspected hemorrhagic fever had tested positive for Marburg virus?</strong></p> <p>Any time there鈥檚 a Marburg outbreak, it鈥檚 worrisome. Historically, it鈥檚 a virus that spreads efficiently from person to person and the mortality has typically been very high.</p> <p>Like Ebola, this virus often shows up in areas that have underdeveloped health-care systems and a lot of characteristics within society at large that enable person-to-person spread. Tight living quarters is one example. These areas oftentimes don鈥檛 have the ability to limit virus spread because of a lack of access to consistent running water. So Marburg or Ebola outbreaks are, of course, very tough for patients and health-care teams, but also very difficult for the health-care system and the population at large to manage.</p> <p>I feel for the folks that are in the thick of it right now because it鈥檚 very, very hard.</p> <p><strong>What lessons can we take away from the Ebola outbreaks over the past decade to respond to the Marburg virus disease outbreak?</strong></p> <p>When you have a disease that has a high mortality rate 鈥 mortality for Marburg virus disease can range from 25 per cent&nbsp;to 90 per cent 鈥 and is very transmissible, we really need to focus on prevention and trying to stop the outbreak from getting larger.</p> <p>If you鈥檙e not living in an area where clinicians are able to send samples for rapid testing, then you can get behind very quickly in an outbreak. Having reference testing laboratories that are geographically nearby is critical. It鈥檚 also really important to have a culture of infection prevention and control embedded in health-care settings. The same precautions we use to prevent norovirus transmission in Canada would work well to protect people from more serious viruses like Marburg and Ebola.</p> <p>If we can provide health-care teams with basic precautionary tools 鈥 gloves, gowns, eye protection, medical masks, access to running water and soap 鈥 combined with well-practiced infection prevention and control hospital processes, then that will help to prevent spread within health-care facilities.</p> <p>Another key element is clear and effective messaging to the public about how we can prevent spread in the community. In addition to excellent infection prevention and control practices in hospital, you also need equal engagement in the community where the virus can otherwise spread.</p> <p><img alt src="/sites/default/files/Fowler_Ebola.png" style="width: 750px; height: 310px;"></p> <p><em>Rob Fowler, second from right, with WHO colleagues, clockwise from bottom left:&nbsp;Sharmistha Mishra, Benon Tumwebaze, Senyonga Muzafalu, Adrienne Chan, Peter Kiiza and Mekonnen Tadesse at the Ebola Clinical Training Centre in Freetown, Sierra Leone&nbsp;(photo courtesy of&nbsp;Rob Fowler)&nbsp;</em></p> <p><strong>Where are we with vaccines and treatments for Marburg virus disease?</strong></p> <p>There currently isn鈥檛 an approved vaccine for Marburg virus. However, there are a number of promising early-phase evaluations underway. Having an effective and accessible vaccine is key in terms of prevention of infection.</p> <p>For treatments, there are nonspecific antiviral medications that may be effective&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;including repurposed medications such as&nbsp;remdesivir, which has been used to treat people with COVID-19 and tested previously in Ebola virus outbreaks.</p> <p>Important products in development include monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies that are specific to the Marburg virus. In our experience with Ebola, those antibody treatments were incredibly effective in reducing mortality. For Marburg, that probably represents one of the brightest hopes. To develop these antibodies, there has to be a will&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;not just medical or societal will, but an economic will&nbsp;鈥 to do it. For Ebola, that economic will existed during and after the 2014 outbreak in West Africa. For Marburg, there has been less of an economic imperative for companies to dive into this, but hopefully that changes.</p> <p>One of the things that the WHO can do is bring people together from academia, industry and other sectors and set priorities that help to send a signal and direct funds. That has happened recently for Marburg and now there are more candidate drugs being tested. I think there鈥檚 lots of hope that, as&nbsp;with Ebola, Marburg will have effective therapies.</p> <p><strong>What鈥檚 your outlook on this current outbreak?</strong></p> <p>It鈥檚 hard to share predictions being so far away from what鈥檚 happening on the ground, but I think it鈥檚 fair to say that we鈥檙e never out of a danger zone when an outbreak is ongoing. Sometimes you have an initial surge of cases being diagnosed, followed by concern among the public and people not seeking care or not getting tested out of fear. That can create a&nbsp;lull between the first set cases and the next bump in cases. The incubation period is usually about a week, but can be up to about three weeks.</p> <p>Theoretically, if you go three weeks without a new case, you might think that the outbreak is clearing. However, that assumes you know about all the new cases&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;which is almost never true. There鈥檚 a relatively large risk that there will be unknown cases. That鈥檚 why we generally go through at least two 21-day periods without a new case before we think an outbreak is over.</p> <p><strong>How can the EPIC community help respond to outbreaks like this one&nbsp;</strong>鈥<strong> now and in the future?</strong></p> <p>There鈥檚 so much expertise in the EPIC community&nbsp;鈥 and in the Toronto and Canadian communities more broadly. I think we really have had an outsized influence on vaccine and therapeutic development, diagnostic testing and clinical care.</p> <p>Canada has been a leader in developing vaccines and monoclonal antibody treatments that were very helpful during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Supporting lab-based diagnostic capacity in Africa was also incredibly helpful. The National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg has been very good at supporting other countries and helping them build up their diagnostic capacity.</p> <p>Canadians have helped to build the foundations of excellent acute and critical care for patients with Ebola 鈥 this goes such a long way to reduce mortality even when there isn鈥檛 a specific therapy available. Yet, all of this requires people to say that it鈥檚 not just someone else鈥檚 issue&nbsp;鈥&nbsp;it鈥檚 our collective issue that we can bring our expertise and resources to help with. It鈥檚 about individual people asking themselves the question, 鈥淒o I have something to offer?鈥 The answer is almost always, 鈥淵es.鈥&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 23 Mar 2023 15:08:31 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 180939 at Through quilting, PhD student accepts her sleeplessness and challenges the 'sleep industrial complex' /news/through-quilting-phd-student-public-health-accepts-her-sleeplessness-and-challenges-sleep <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Through quilting, PhD student accepts her sleeplessness and challenges the 'sleep industrial complex'</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/quilt.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=VlrogVGx 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2023-04/quilt.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=95gBQp-T 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2023-04/quilt.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=AWRsuohb 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/quilt.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=VlrogVGx" alt="Kristie Serota's quilt"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>geoff.vendeville</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-11-25T12:31:55-05:00" title="Thursday, November 25, 2021 - 12:31" class="datetime">Thu, 11/25/2021 - 12:31</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item"><p>Kristie Serota, a PhD student in public health, made a quilt to describe her relationship with sleeplessness and challenge the conception of insomnia as a medical disorder (photos courtesy of Kristie Serota)&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/francoise-makanda" hreflang="en">Fran莽oise Makanda</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/breaking-research" hreflang="en">Breaking Research</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/covid-19" hreflang="en">COVID-19</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dalla-lana-school-public-health" hreflang="en">Dalla Lana School of Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/sleep" hreflang="en">Sleep</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>About <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2018012/article/00002-eng.htm">one-in-four adults</a> in Canada reports being dissatisfied with their sleep. But instead of fighting sleeplessness, <strong>Kristie Serota </strong>chose to embrace it.&nbsp;</p> <p>The PhD candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health took up quilting in the wee hours to document her relationship with sleeplessness 鈥 and to critique what some researchers call the 鈥渟leep industrial complex.鈥&nbsp;</p> <p>In the latest issue of&nbsp;<em>Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal</em>, <a href="https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/ari/index.php/ari/article/view/29602">she says</a> nocturnal quilting helped her accept sleeplessness as a part of her life rather than a medical disorder in need of fixing 鈥 an insight that speaks to a larger public health issue related to precarious employment, inflexible work schedules and other stressors that often disproportionately affect marginalized groups.&nbsp;</p> <div class="image-with-caption left"> <div><img alt="Kristie Serota" class="media-element file-media-original lazy" data-delta="3" height="401" src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/Kristie%20Serota-photo-headshot2.jpeg" typeof="foaf:Image" width="300" loading="lazy"><em><span style="font-size:12px;">Kristie Serota</span></em></div> </div> <p>鈥淵ou know sporadically, periodically or continuously having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep is just a normal part of our human experience, and yet we have special mattresses, oil diffusers, teas and meditation,鈥 Serota says.&nbsp;鈥淲ho is benefitting from this?鈥&nbsp;</p> <p>Serota came up with the idea of quilting to critique the&nbsp;鈥渂iomedical construction of sleeplessness as insomnia鈥 during a narrative research course taught by <strong>Michael Atkinson</strong>, a professor at Dalla Lana who specializes in the study of suffering and pain across cultures and health-care contexts.&nbsp;</p> <p>The course challenges students to recount a personal health experience using a medium of their choice.&nbsp;</p> <p>Although sleep aids represent a multi-billion-dollar market, Atkinson notes these products do not address the core causes of insomnia. 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 fix the conditions of your existence,鈥 he says.&nbsp;鈥淵ou still have to get up early. You still have to go to work. You still live within those structures. You still have anxieties.鈥</p> <p>Atkinson says the influence of one's social climate on sleep cannot be underestimated. Studies suggest that socially marginalized people, including disadvantaged women, are most vulnerable to insomnia.</p> <p>鈥淭he most vulnerable members of any social structure usually report higher in categories related to population health conditions and this is certainly true of insomnia,鈥 Atkinson says.</p> <p>While there is a substantial body of research on sleep and a massive sleep product industry, there is relatively little public-health research on the subject, Atkinson says 鈥 except for a small area of scholarship on the sleep industrial complex.&nbsp;</p> <p>He says it may be time to pay greater attention to the social causes of insomnia, which Atkinson categorizes as an invisible disability.&nbsp;</p> <p>With the shift in work schedules during the pandemic, many have experienced disruptions to their sleep for better or worse. While added anxiety has kept some up at night, others have said remote work has given them greater flexibility catch some shut-eye according to their own schedule.</p> <p>In Serota's case, she says working remotely allowed her to follow a sleep cycle that matches her internal clock.</p> <p>鈥淚 have just embraced sleeplessness and instead of fighting against myself and getting really frustrated and worked up that I can鈥檛 fall asleep. I just get out of bed and go do something else, and then wait until I feel tired and then say 鈥極kay, I guess, now is when I鈥檓 going to go to sleep,'鈥 she says.&nbsp;</p> <p>However, Serota acknowledges that embracing sleeplessness requires a flexible work schedule that isn't available to everyone.&nbsp;</p> <p>Atkinson, too, says a nine-to-five work schedule, plus after-hours work demands, can cause stress that makes it difficult to sleep.&nbsp;</p> <p>鈥淲e鈥檝e got these nine-to-five schedules or whatever schedules that structure our existence,鈥 he says. 鈥淏ut we take so much of that home and it鈥檚 never over, and so we鈥檙e either working late into the night, or we have 100 million things in our head at night. And this is such a common thing.</p> <p>鈥淵ou鈥檙e not able to sleep within the confines of that structure,鈥 he adds.&nbsp;鈥淵ou never get to sleep, and then it creates more anxiety when you try to sleep because you鈥檙e constantly worried.鈥</p> <p>Atkinson recommends looking into health interventions that could promote work-life balance: changing the length of work shifts, giving employees the ability to work from home and reducing job insecurity.</p> <p>On a cultural level, he says it is worth re-examining the idea that living with stress that keeps us up at night is natural.&nbsp;鈥淭he worst thing that happens is that we assume culturally that the lack of sleep is normal,鈥 he says.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 25 Nov 2021 17:31:55 +0000 geoff.vendeville 301185 at Stories from the Field: Podcast on public health nursing launched with 老司机直播 support /news/stories-field-podcast-public-health-nursing-launched-u-t-support <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Stories from the Field: Podcast on public health nursing launched with 老司机直播 support </span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/cava-blue.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=2GaGJBXe 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/cava-blue.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=B9yenmhD 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/cava-blue.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=mJlukk0B 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/cava-blue.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=2GaGJBXe" alt="Maureen Cava and Susan Blue"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-09-30T13:54:37-04:00" title="Thursday, September 30, 2021 - 13:54" class="datetime">Thu, 09/30/2021 - 13:54</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Susan Blue and Maureen Cava, both retired public health nurses, created the Stories from the Field podcast to shine a light on the important role public health nursing plays in the health-care system.</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/rebecca-biason" hreflang="en">Rebecca Biason</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/coronavirus" hreflang="en">Coronavirus</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/lawrence-s-bloomberg-faculty-nursing" hreflang="en">Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the field of public health into the spotlight. Yet&nbsp;nurses, who often work most closely with the community, have somehow remained&nbsp;largely in the background.</p> <p>It鈥檚 an oversight&nbsp;<strong>Susan Blue</strong>, an alumna of the University of Toronto鈥檚 Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, and&nbsp;<strong>Maureen Cava</strong>,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>who was cross-appointed to the faculty and taught community health nursing, are hoping to rectify.</p> <p>Both retired public health nurses, the pair decided to create a podcast called&nbsp;<a href="https://bloomberg.nursing.utoronto.ca/stories-from-the-field/"><em>Stories from the Field</em>&nbsp;</a>to amplify nursing voices and&nbsp;help students and the wider public learn more about what public health nurses do 鈥 perhaps even consider it as a career.&nbsp;</p> <p><em>Stories from the Field</em>鈥檚&nbsp;six episodes take listeners on a journey across Ontario as co-hosts Blue and Cava speak with public health nurses about everything from harm reduction and the opioid crisis&nbsp;to nursing leadership and the COVID-19 pandemic.</p> <p>鈥淚鈥檝e worked in public health for almost 40 years, and I still get asked what&nbsp;hospital&nbsp;I work in,鈥 says Cava, who is also the former president of the Ontario Association of Public Health Nursing Leaders.&nbsp;</p> <p>鈥淲e are passionate about public health&nbsp;and committed to ensuring the public, as well as other nurses, know what public health nursing means.鈥</p> <p>鈥淎s a public health nurse, you are taking a preventative approach to the health and wellbeing of the community at large, as well as individuals,鈥 adds Blue, 鈥淚t鈥檚 why we hope to see more nurses in the field.鈥</p> <p><iframe frameborder="no" height="200px" scrolling="no" seamless src="https://player.simplecast.com/1a48b5d2-d146-4b97-882f-ed7ccdebe1c5?dark=false" width="100%"></iframe></p> <p>The podcast is proudly sponsored by the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing鈥檚 Verna Huffman Splane Fund, an endowed award named after <strong>Verna Splane</strong>, a public health nurse <a href="https://bloomberg.nursing.utoronto.ca/news/vera-splane-class-3t9-turns-100-years-old/">who graduated from 老司机直播 in 1939 and enjoyed an illustrious career in nursing and health care</a>.</p> <p>鈥淢aureen and Susan have captured the essence of what makes public health nursing essential and have shone a much-needed light on the work of our public health nurses,鈥 says <strong>Linda Johnston</strong>, dean of the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing. 鈥淭his podcast will be an important tool for future nurses to see the breadth of expertise that this particular field of nursing has to offer.鈥</p> <p>Writer <strong>Rebecca Biason</strong>&nbsp;recently spoke with Blue and Cava about the importance of giving nurses a voice&nbsp;and what they are hoping the podcast鈥檚 listeners will learn.</p> <hr> <p><strong>What is the role of the public health nurse?</strong></p> <p><em>Blue</em>:&nbsp;To me, public health nursing means putting energy and resources into disease prevention instead of waiting until people get sick to spring into action.&nbsp;As a public health nurse, that means reaching the entire population to maintain and improve people鈥檚 health and quality of life.</p> <p>The community is our client&nbsp;and that鈥檚 something I鈥檓 very passionate about. Keeping people out of hospitals can make a real difference in their health.</p> <p><em>Cava</em>:&nbsp;Public health nurses play a significant role in policy development&nbsp;鈥 things like food security, basic income, housing&nbsp;and other social determinants of health. That kind of preventative upstream approach is what we focus on to ensure people are healthy, physically fit, have harm reduction strategies&nbsp;and have the resources they need so they don鈥檛 end up in emergency rooms or hospitalized for things that are preventable.</p> <p>It makes sense to put money into prevention, but there has been a chronic lack of funding since we鈥檝e been in the field. Public health gets a small piece of the pie to do an inordinate amount of work in preventing people from getting sick. It is why we are so committed to our work, as we see the value in public health nursing as an investment in the future of society.</p> <p><strong>What led to the creation of <em>Stories from the Field</em>?</strong></p> <p><em>Cava</em>:&nbsp;Public health nursing is not well understood&nbsp;鈥 by nurses, by politicians, by the public. When I was the president of the Ontario public health nursing leaders association, it was one of my goals to ensure people knew about what public health nurses do and the impact they have.</p> <p>When I worked at Toronto Public Health, many of the student nurses I encountered had no idea about the scope and breadth of all that is involved as a public health nurse. It was such an eye-opening experience for them, as I hope this podcast will be for other nursing students.</p> <p><em>Blue</em>:&nbsp;Maureen and I met in 1990 working for the former North York Public Health Department (now Toronto Public Health).&nbsp;So, having known each for other for 30 years, it wasn鈥檛 a huge leap to consider embarking on this project together. We both share a drive to ensure public health nursing is understood and valued as a key part of the health care sector and wanting public health nursing to be brought to the forefront.</p> <p><strong>What were some of the unforeseen challenges in creating the podcast?</strong></p> <p><em>Blue</em>:&nbsp;Well, we are novice podcast hosts. We had listened to a few podcasts, but certainly hadn鈥檛 developed one. Maureen came across a podcast camp offered through Ryerson University, and we thought it would be a good way to get some knowledge under our belts.</p> <p><em>Cava</em>:&nbsp;Following that camp, we thought, 鈥淥h, for sure we could do this!鈥 But it turns out we were a bit naive about the whole process. We had some initial challenges getting funding for the podcast, but eventually after speaking with Dean Johnston of the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, her support and that of the Verna Huffman Splane fund helped get our project off the ground.</p> <p><em>Blue</em>:&nbsp;COVID threw a wrench into everything. We thought we would be recording in a studio together, but soon we were met with a steep learning curve of having to set-up equipment and software on our own. We were grateful to the producers at <a href="https://www.vocalfrystudios.com/">Vocal Fry Studios</a> for assisting us along the way, but it was very tough in the beginning.</p> <p><em>Cava</em>:&nbsp;COVID also meant that many of our nursing colleagues who we planned to have as guests were working full tilt, and that took precedence over everything. We were lucky to be able to eventually meet and interview many experienced public health nurses to share their stories. It just goes to show how involved public health nurses are across the health-care spectrum.</p> <p><strong>Do you have a favourite episode?</strong></p> <p><em>Cava</em>:&nbsp;For me, 鈥淓pisode Three: Frontline in a Pandemic鈥&nbsp;stands out. It tells a captivating story about the early stages of the pandemic and the work nurses do behind the scenes to get those shots into arms. It shines a light on the role they had across Ontario in a way that hasn鈥檛 really been shown throughout the pandemic. Public health nurses were front and centre since the beginning of the pandemic and are continuing to lead in their roles as things are evolving.</p> <p><em>Blue</em>:&nbsp;鈥淓pisode Two: Harm Reduction Approaches to Opioid Use鈥&nbsp;is a favourite. Our guest Rhonda Lovell spoke from a personal perspective about being a young mum&nbsp;and how her interactions with public health nurses during that time in her life motivated her to consider this field of practice and move into public health nursing. She shared such great insights and knowledge.</p> <p><strong>What are you hoping students and the public will take away from this podcast?</strong></p> <p><em>Cava</em>:&nbsp;It goes back to why we started the podcast. We want students to be inspired and think about public health as a career choice. We want them to hear from public health nurses who are passionate and excited about what they do, so that they can see the depth and variety of opportunities there are to work with people and communities. And if they do choose public health, or have chosen it already, I hope this also inspires them to advocate and to give back to the field.</p> <p><em>Blue</em>:&nbsp;It鈥檚 a career where nurses have considerable variety and can move to other areas of practice. Public health nursing offers lots of flexibility, learning and growth opportunities. For the general public, I think just hearing these human-interest stories will change their viewpoints about public health. Hopefully anyone, whether they are a nurse or not, can relate to this content and be informed.</p> <p><em>Cava</em>:&nbsp;These are true stories from the field. We hope students, nursing colleagues&nbsp;and those in other disciplines&nbsp;will listen and consider the impact of public health nursing.</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 30 Sep 2021 17:54:37 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 170581 at A public health visionary, Vivek Goel leaves a lasting legacy at 老司机直播 /news/public-health-visionary-vivek-goel-leaves-lasting-legacy-u-t <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">A public health visionary, Vivek Goel leaves a lasting legacy at 老司机直播</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/UofT86163_0827VivekGoel009-crop.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=m1ECPawA 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2023-04/UofT86163_0827VivekGoel009-crop.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=X11h5_0y 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2023-04/UofT86163_0827VivekGoel009-crop.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=S3_zKWIV 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2023-04/UofT86163_0827VivekGoel009-crop.jpeg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=m1ECPawA" alt="Vivek Goel"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-06-29T12:29:32-04:00" title="Tuesday, June 29, 2021 - 12:29" class="datetime">Tue, 06/29/2021 - 12:29</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item"><p>(Photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)</p> </div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/heidi-singer" hreflang="en">Heidi Singer</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/coronavirus" hreflang="en">Coronavirus</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/temerty-faculty-medicine" hreflang="en">Temerty Faculty of Medicine</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/institute-health-policy-management-and-evaluation" hreflang="en">Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dalla-lana-school-public-health" hreflang="en">Dalla Lana School of Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/vivek-goel" hreflang="en">Vivek Goel</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>As he prepares to take on the role of president at the University of Waterloo this week,&nbsp;<strong>Vivek Goel </strong>will leave behind a lasting legacy at the University of Toronto and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in particular.</p> <p>The former 老司机直播 vice-president and provost, vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic innitiatives,&nbsp;and professor&nbsp;emeritus at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) enjoyed a more than three-decade relationship with the university during which he helped make Dalla Lana a renowned public health school.</p> <p>After moving up through the ranks of academia, government and to the top rungs of 老司机直播, Goel 鈥 along with fellow public health evangelist and 老司机直播 President Emeritus&nbsp;<strong>David Naylor</strong>&nbsp;鈥 seized the moment to carve out a stand-alone school from what is now known as the Temerty&nbsp;Faculty of Medicine. As a 老司机直播 medical resident in the mid-1980s, Goel advocated for the creation of a separate public health faculty. As a young academic, he was part of a group that recognized the power of marrying epidemiology with health systems and policy, forming the roots of IHPME.</p> <p>鈥淭he first few weeks of [my] stepping into the dean鈥檚 position, Vivek invited me to lunch for a pep talk and a few specific mandates,鈥 recalls <strong>Catharine Whiteside</strong>, former dean of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.</p> <p>鈥淥ne request was to establish a school of public health and, with his support, the strategic planning was started that required considerable culture change. When <strong>Paul Dalla Lana</strong> came along a couple of years later, we were ready for his investment and the school was launched. It took a while, but the DLSPH emerged as a separate, very successful faculty&nbsp;鈥 just as Vivek envisioned.鈥</p> <div class="image-with-caption right"> <p><img alt src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/IMG_0029.jpeg" style="width: 200px; height: 267px;" loading="lazy"><em>Vivek Goel earned a master鈥檚<br> degree in community health<br> from 老司机直播 in 1988.</em><br> &nbsp;</p> </div> <p>Goel first arrived at 老司机直播 as an intern in 1984 and started as a graduate student and post-graduate medical resident in 1986&nbsp;in the medicine faculty鈥檚 old division of community health (now Dalla Lana). The program has produced a&nbsp;number of top government health leaders, including&nbsp;<strong>David Williams</strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>Sheela Basrur</strong>,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>both former Ontario chief medical officers of health, and&nbsp;<strong>Howard Njoo</strong>,&nbsp;deputy chief public health officer at the Public Health Agency of Canada.</p> <p>In addition, some of Goel鈥檚&nbsp;former students, including <strong>Doug Manuel</strong>, <strong>Ross Upshur</strong> and <strong>Laura Rosella</strong>, are among the leading Canadian academics in public health.&nbsp;</p> <p>Along the way, Goel met his wife, then-epidemiology student&nbsp;<strong>Susan Jaglal</strong>, who is now chair of the department of physical therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.</p> <p>Goel earned a master鈥檚 degree in health administration&nbsp;and another in biostatistics at Harvard University. Walking the halls of a building entirely dedicated to public health in Boston, he was struck by the energy and ambition of the stand-alone faculty.</p> <h4>An early attempt</h4> <p>As chief resident and a member of student government, Goel was tapped to serve on a committee reviewing the division of community health at 老司机直播. It had been a decade since the old School of Hygiene had folded and its remnants were getting lost in the enormous medical school.</p> <p>鈥淭here was a set of us that felt strongly that community health wasn鈥檛 working well in medicine and recommended that a separate school should be created,鈥 recalls Goel. 鈥淭he majority of the committee said we should focus on further implementing community medicine within FOM. I was one of the people signing the minority report. It was my first real engagement in that kind of academic review process and it shaped my interest in academic leadership.鈥</p> <p>Goel joined the Faculty of Medicine, as it was then known,&nbsp;as a professor in 1991 and went on to help found IC/ES. During the 1990s, he watched, as a status-only faculty member, as the future of public health at 老司机直播 was reviewed and reviewed again. The very first bit of success, he recalls, was in the mid-1990s when preventive medicine merged with other disciplines including the behavioural sciences to create the department of public health sciences. By that time he had moved on to campus as a full-time faculty member.</p> <p>At the same time, Goel was eyeing the launch of an exciting new area of public health. 鈥淲e had population epidemiology and preventive medicine, but this emerging strength of clinical epidemiology was largely ignored on campus and it grew up in the hospitals and clinical departments,鈥 he says. 鈥淭he dean of medicine at the time, Professor <strong>Arnie Aberman</strong>, coaxed me into becoming the chair of Health Administration, and being part of the team to bring clinical epidemiology into the department.</p> <p>鈥淲e went from being focussed primarily on hospital management and health policy to merging with all this great clinical epidemiological and health services research at the hospitals.鈥</p> <p>The department would continue to expand, eventually morphing into IHPME.</p> <h4>Making his move</h4> <p>The 2003 SARS crisis was a defining moment for public health in Canada. The disease hit an unprepared country with a weaker public health infrastructure than existed in peer nations. The following year, Goel started a four-year stint as 老司机直播鈥檚 vice president and provost. A year later, Naylor became the university鈥檚 president&nbsp;and Whiteside was appointed dean of medicine.</p> <p>鈥淲e were well lined up,鈥 says Goel. 鈥淐athy&nbsp;(Whiteside)&nbsp;commissioned a review and laid out the plan to create a school of public health within medicine and, over time, build up the foundations to create a freestanding faculty. Then Paul Dalla Lana stepped forward with the founding gift to establish the DLSPH as part of the university鈥檚 post-SARS vision.</p> <p>鈥淒LSPH with IHPME as part of it is so well positioned now because you look at its strengths across chronic and infectious diseases, mental health, biostatistics, occupational and environmental health, epidemiology, social sciences in health&nbsp;and bioethics 鈥 and then you connect these with the rest of the university and its affiliated institutions, and there are so many great opportunities,鈥 he says. 鈥淎t Harvard, I remember comparing and asking why can鈥檛 we have something like this? Now, when we were able to walk the halls in the Health Sciences Building, you feel the same sort of vibe I felt at Harvard. And I know it鈥檚 only going to continue to get better.鈥</p> <p> <img height="500" width="750" class="media-element file-media-original" data-delta="3" typeof="foaf:Image" src="/sites/default/files/GettyImages-165315995-crop.jpg" loading="lazy" alt="Vivek Goel in 2009"> </p> <p><em>As president of Public Health Ontario, Vivek Goel&nbsp;monitors the latest developments in the H1N1 flu virus in 2009 (photo by Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)</em></p> <p>Goel left 老司机直播 in 2008 to become the founding president and CEO of Public Health Ontario, an organization created in response to SARS. Despite the high-ranking position, Professor Emeritus <strong>Chandrakant Shah</strong>&nbsp;鈥 an early influence on Goel鈥檚 thinking around equity and diversity 鈥 frequently called or dropped by his office, unannounced, to advocate for more equitable representation among public health leaders.</p> <p>Shah recalls fondly that Goel never turned him away, and always levelled with him.</p> <p>鈥淗e always cared for his colleagues, his students&nbsp;and even his mentors,鈥 says Shah. 鈥淗e鈥檚 a brilliant, strategic thinker with the academic experience, but also he knows how to deal with the public and private sectors. He has been a good friend to the school over the years.鈥</p> <p>Goel returned to 老司机直播 seven years later as vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. When the pandemic hit, he quickly became special adviser to the university鈥檚&nbsp;president and provost on the pandemic&nbsp;鈥 all while serving on numerous national COVID-19 committees and task forces and maintaining <a href="/news/tags/covid-19-podcast">a regular&nbsp;podcast on the pandemic</a>.</p> <p>His list of honours is long&nbsp;and includes membership in the Order of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, along with many teaching awards.</p> <p><img alt="Vivek Goel delivers remarks in 2015" src="/sites/default/files/2023-04/19473884403_b6f3fecb62_o-crop.jpeg" style="width: 750px; height: 500px;" loading="lazy"></p> <p><em>Vivek Goel, then 老司机直播鈥檚 vice-president, research and innovation, delivers remarks at a 2015 funding announcement that enabled the creation of Medicine by Design, an interdisciplinary regenerative medicine initiative&nbsp;(photo by University of Toronto)</em></p> <p>鈥淗e is someone who teaches you to believe in yourself and empowers you to have an impact in ways you could not have imagined,鈥 recalls <strong>Laura Rosella</strong>, an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and former post-doctoral researcher who worked with Goel. 鈥淗is commitment and dedication to mentorship in a way that builds people up will be felt for generations to come as many of those he has trained have become top public health and health system leaders and researchers.鈥</p> <p>As president of a major Canadian university, Goel now hopes to use his experience and platform to advocate for a stronger public health system in Canada.</p> <p>鈥淚 hope I鈥檒l be able to bring a voice for public health much more broadly across the country and to many other tables,鈥 he says. 鈥淚n other countries they have figured out ways to insulate the public-health infrastructure from politics. We need people to talk about how to protect and sustain them, and there鈥檚 a role for academic institutions in that process.鈥</p> <p>He&nbsp;is also eager to maintain ties as a&nbsp;professor emeritus at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and to share ideas about how to raise the public health literacy of Canadians on a broad level.</p> <p>That鈥檚 a promise Dean&nbsp;<strong>Adalsteinn (Steini) Brown</strong>&nbsp;says he will remember.</p> <p>鈥淰ivek has had a leadership role in shaping the careers of many of our students, alumni and faculty, our school, our public health system&nbsp;and Canada鈥檚 response to the pandemic, among so many other accomplishments,鈥 says Brown. 鈥淚 know that he will bring the same impactful leadership to Waterloo 鈥 but I can鈥檛 imagine our school without him.鈥</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Tue, 29 Jun 2021 16:29:32 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 301308 at Over-policing in Black communities to be explored in new 老司机直播 public health course /news/over-policing-black-communities-be-explored-new-u-t-public-health-course <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Over-policing in Black communities to be explored in new 老司机直播 public health course</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1196650023.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=qmaDtX7y 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/GettyImages-1196650023.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=e0H6enC5 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/GettyImages-1196650023.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=NLxGlcOv 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/GettyImages-1196650023.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=qmaDtX7y" alt="handcuffs in shadow"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2021-01-08T10:52:00-05:00" title="Friday, January 8, 2021 - 10:52" class="datetime">Fri, 01/08/2021 - 10:52</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Akwatu Khenti, an assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, says his new course will analyze the public health implications of race-based criminal justice data (photo by Ilkay Dede/EyeEm via Getty Images)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/heidi-singer" hreflang="en">Heidi Singer</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/anti-black-racism" hreflang="en">Anti-Black Racism</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dalla-lana-school-public-health" hreflang="en">Dalla Lana School of Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/graduate-students" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>A new course offered at the University of Toronto this spring will allow students to analyze the public health implications of race-based criminal justice data in real-time 鈥 just as Canadian governments are releasing the information.</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/Good%20photo%20for%20web%20site%5B21621%5D.jpg" alt="Akwatu Khenti">In Anti-Black Racism as a Policing and Public Health Crisis, <strong>Akwatu Khenti</strong>, an assistant professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health,<strong>&nbsp;</strong>will help students build the analytical skills needed to use&nbsp;publicly available data to answer critical public health questions, with the goal of understanding barriers to an equitable criminal justice system.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>The course explores the ways in which Canada鈥檚 criminal justice system intersects with race, poverty, gender and mental health to create compounded intersectional risks for Black Canadians 鈥 and considers how racism and over-policing have undermined Black trust and confidence in the Canadian justice system. It also applies an anti-racist lens to public health approaches to Black gun violence and homicide victimization in Toronto by querying&nbsp;whether public health has effectively dealt with a long-standing racialized epidemic of homicide mortality in Toronto. Students will have the chance to hear directly from guest speakers who have been involved with the system and/or are advocating for changes to eliminate anti-Black racism in criminal justice.</p> <p>鈥淭he framing that the course brings to the issues is distinct,鈥 says Khenti, a mental health researcher at&nbsp;the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)&nbsp;and former assistant deputy minister at the&nbsp;Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate.</p> <p>鈥淲e will examine the issues through the Black community鈥檚 crisis of trust in policing, which is at its lowest ebb in Ontario right now, the crisis in police credibility due to the persistence of racial profiling,&nbsp;and the public health crisis resulting from police violence that manifests 鈥 not just in gun deaths, but in mental health consequences.鈥</p> <p>In 2020, the Ontario government mandated the collection of race-based data across the criminal justice system, from police and prosecutors to jails and courts. For the first time, the public has the opportunity to learn, for example, whether Black and Indigenous people are being granted bail at the same rate as those of other races,&nbsp;or whether racialized people are being arrested with higher rates of use of force than whites for similar&nbsp;offences.</p> <p>For Khenti, the mental health impact of over-policing is key, but traditionally very difficult to measure. He points to the now-defunct Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS) as an example of the problem.&nbsp;For a decade, he says, many of these TAVIS officers, deployed to high-crime areas, created fear in Black communities.</p> <p>But drawing a direct correlation between TAVIS and mental health changes is difficult. Khenti hopes the collection of race-based criminal justice data will increase understanding in this area by showing the huge health costs of over-policing on Black communities.</p> <p>鈥淥ver-policing is a public health issue because it alters people鈥檚 wellbeing and their participation in society,鈥 he says. 鈥淭hose costs have not been calculated but I always believed they are very high 鈥 especially around the TAVIS units. If we could calculate the anxiety and depression in the areas where they worked, I believe they would be exorbitant.鈥</p> <p>Khenti says the data offer exciting possibilities to help police forces deal more helpfully with the large percentage of mental health calls they receive.</p> <p>鈥淚t鈥檚 not a question of defunding the police. It鈥檚 about creating a different model of policing,鈥 he says. 鈥淲e have to move from a militarized and enforcement model to a public service model. Police budgets are growing. But they鈥檙e not growing their training practices and/or mental health units, for instance, by expanding training of all dispatchers to equip them for mental health calls. I think there鈥檚 a lot of opportunities to work with the police.鈥</p> <p>The course (CHL 7001H S5) is open to all Dalla Lana School of Public Health graduate students&nbsp;and should be of interest to those planning a career in government or academia, Khenti says.</p> <p>鈥淲e鈥檒l be creating a group of graduates that should be comfortable with the issues and able to add value to the data,鈥 he says, pointing to a growing need for analysis of race-based data within government now that use-of-force information is being collected.</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Fri, 08 Jan 2021 15:52:00 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 168010 at Even during the coronavirus pandemic, public health workers' role is unrecognized: 老司机直播's Vivek Goel /news/even-during-coronavirus-pandemic-public-health-workers-role-unrecognized-u-t-s-vivek-goel <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">Even during the coronavirus pandemic, public health workers' role is unrecognized: 老司机直播's Vivek Goel</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/ap_20071541162610.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=5E0dlbJO 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/ap_20071541162610.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Zwbvf_dN 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/ap_20071541162610.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=GataMPuP 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/ap_20071541162610.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=5E0dlbJO" alt="&quot;&quot;"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>Christopher.Sorensen</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2020-04-29T15:54:46-04:00" title="Wednesday, April 29, 2020 - 15:54" class="datetime">Wed, 04/29/2020 - 15:54</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Anthony Fauci, left, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks with Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a congressional hearing in March (photo by Patrick Semansky/AP Photo)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/vivek-goel" hreflang="en">Vivek Goel</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/coronavirus" hreflang="en">Coronavirus</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dalla-lana-school-public-health" hreflang="en">Dalla Lana School of Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/conversation" hreflang="en">The Conversation</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/vivek-goel" hreflang="en">Vivek Goel</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p class="legacy">The recent <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/connect/togetherathome/">One World: Together at Home</a> virtual concert brought together musical talent from around the world to thank front-line health workers&nbsp;and <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/one-world-together-at-home-impact/">raised about US$128 million to support COVID-19 response efforts globally</a>. Celebrities and politicians thanked those on the front lines of the response, including health-care workers and scientists working on COVID-19, those working in the food supply chain, as well as sanitation, delivery and mail workers.</p> <p>However, nobody acknowledged all the people in public health agencies who have been working tirelessly during this crisis. This includes public health nurses and physicians, health inspectors and educators, laboratory technicians, epidemiologists and statisticians.</p> <p>These are the people who work in the background to keep us healthy. They process the tests that identify who has the disease. They produce the statistics and models that track how the disease is progressing through our countries.</p> <p>The lack of acknowledgement doesn鈥檛 surprise me. The work of public health is invisible, largely unrecognized by society. Despite increases to general spending on medical services, <a href="https://www.tfah.org/report-details/publichealthfunding2020/">public health agencies are regularly subjected to budget cuts</a>.</p> <h3>Fixation on front-line workers</h3> <p>I say this not just as a disgruntled public health specialist, upset to see my colleagues overlooked. There is something much more significant about our society鈥檚 fixation on front-line health care and medical approaches to disease management.</p> <p>For the past century we have medicalized disease prevention and management for both infectious and chronic diseases. We focus on early detection and treatment (known as screening) and therapies (<a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3390%2Fph3051561">chemoprophylaxis</a>) for disease prevention. Such medical models run counter to what is known as population health.</p> <figure class="align-center "><img alt sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330450/original/file-20200424-163067-piv2rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330450/original/file-20200424-163067-piv2rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=368&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330450/original/file-20200424-163067-piv2rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=368&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330450/original/file-20200424-163067-piv2rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=368&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330450/original/file-20200424-163067-piv2rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=463&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330450/original/file-20200424-163067-piv2rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=463&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330450/original/file-20200424-163067-piv2rd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=463&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w"> <figcaption><span class="caption">Lady Gaga was the driving force behind the One World: Together at Home virtual concert that paid tribute to front-line health-care workers</span>&nbsp;<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(YouTube/Global One)</span></span></figcaption> </figure> <p>In a population health approach, we consider everyone and examine what keeps people healthy. <a href="https://www.cpha.ca/what-are-social-determinants-health">Social and economic determinants of health</a> are much more strongly related to health outcomes than biologic factors.</p> <p>A population health approach promotes healthy living, healthy environments and healthy social policies balanced with appropriate medical interventions for those who need them. For example, <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases-(cvds)">risk of cardiovascular disease</a> can be reduced through a focus on <a href="https://www.ices.on.ca/Publications/Atlases-and-Reports/2016/A-4-9-Billion-Dollar-Decrease-in-Health-Care-Expenditure">physical activity, good nutrition and smoking cessation</a>. Population health approaches look at the environment in which people live and ensure they have the means and access to services to lead healthy lives.</p> <p>In contrast, the medical model might focus on finding the people at highest risk for cardiovascular disease through screening tests and then prescribing them drugs. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192630971.001.0001">Research has consistently shown that a population health approach has greater impact</a> on health status and is more equitable across society.</p> <h3>Losing sight of larger perspective</h3> <p>What does this mean for our responses to COVID-19? The narrative to date has been dominated by the medical model 鈥 testing and the search for treatments, ICU beds and ventilators.</p> <figure class="align-center "><img alt sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330454/original/file-20200424-163088-19rwwmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330454/original/file-20200424-163088-19rwwmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=405&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330454/original/file-20200424-163088-19rwwmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=405&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330454/original/file-20200424-163088-19rwwmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=600&amp;h=405&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330454/original/file-20200424-163088-19rwwmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=509&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330454/original/file-20200424-163088-19rwwmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=30&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=509&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/330454/original/file-20200424-163088-19rwwmu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=15&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;h=509&amp;fit=crop&amp;dpr=3 2262w"> <figcaption><span class="caption">Many people, like these residents of Toronto, pay tribute every night to front-line health-care workers. Those who work in public health away from the front lines should also be recognized.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(photo by Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)</span></span></figcaption> </figure> <p>We absolutely do need to focus on these factors to ensure we can treat those who develop severe disease. But this fixation has come at the expense of the population health perspective.</p> <p>And I mean this literally. Newscasts are dominated by clinicians on the front lines and those with a biomedical perspective. How often have we seen Anthony Fauci, the head of the U.S.&nbsp;National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, versus Robert Redfield, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/dr-anthony-fauci-trusted-voice-coronavirus-200330124431910.html">Fauci has done an incredible job</a>, but <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/politics/second-coronavirus-cdc-director-robert-redfield/index.html">the perspective of Redfield is also important</a>.</p> <p>The medical model has focused on the immediate needs. To get us out of this, <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/oxford-university-has-just-launched-a-human-trial-of-a-potential-covid-19-vaccine">the medical model points to a vaccine</a> 鈥 which could take years to roll out 鈥 as the solution.</p> <p>A population health perspective to COVID-19 considers the impact on the entire population, not just those with disease. It applies an equity lens to ensure no one gets left behind. A population health perspective will consider whether the consequences of continuing our current restrictive measures will cause more harm than good in the long run.</p> <p>Socio-economic status is the strongest determinant of health. Long-term economic harm may have greater health consequences than COVID-19. But the deaths from COVID-19 are visible and in the news. The deaths that might result from the economic consequences will only be seen in statistics 鈥 we won鈥檛 know who was directly affected. They will be invisible, just like public health.</p> <p>We need to thank our public health workers. We also need to listen to them.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img alt="The Conversation" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137144/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important" width="1" loading="lazy"><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/vivek-goel-1045615">Vivek Goel</a>&nbsp;is a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and vice-president of research and innovation, and strategic initiatives at the&nbsp;<a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-toronto-1281">University of Toronto</a>.</span></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-the-role-of-public-health-workers-is-unrecognized-137144">original article</a>.</em></p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Wed, 29 Apr 2020 19:54:46 +0000 Christopher.Sorensen 164325 at 老司机直播 researchers uncover the communities with the highest premature deaths in Ontario /news/u-t-researchers-uncover-communities-highest-premature-deaths-ontario <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">老司机直播 researchers uncover the communities with the highest premature deaths in Ontario</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2019-08-08-Emma-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=PwiR5923 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/2019-08-08-Emma-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=cqfB1jXD 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/2019-08-08-Emma-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Ztk3dySg 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/2019-08-08-Emma-resized.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=PwiR5923" alt="Photo of Emmalin Buajitti"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>noreen.rasbach</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2019-08-08T13:48:04-04:00" title="Thursday, August 8, 2019 - 13:48" class="datetime">Thu, 08/08/2019 - 13:48</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Emmalin Buajitti, the study's co-author, is a recent graduate of the Master of Public Health program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (photo by Lauren Jewett)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/heidi-singer" hreflang="en">Heidi Singer</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/our-community" hreflang="en">Our Community</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/ontario-impact" hreflang="en">Ontario Impact</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/alumni" hreflang="en">老司机直播</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dalla-lana-school-public-health" hreflang="en">Dalla Lana School of Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/graduate-students" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/research-innovation" hreflang="en">Research &amp; Innovation</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>University of Toronto researchers have conducted the first spatial analysis of death in Ontario, discovering that social and demographic factors are by far the biggest factors in predicting who dies before their time.</p> <p>Public health researchers used traditional statistical and geography tools to break down premature death rates by community in Ontario, allowing them to pinpoint clusters with the highest numbers of people dying before age 75. They found sizable disparities in premature mortality, with the majority of premature deaths occurring in low-income neighbourhoods and the fewest in immigrant communities.</p> <p>鈥淭he fact that immigrant and socio-economic status alone accounted for 80 per cent of the variation 鈥 that鈥檚 a staggering amount,鈥 says the study鈥檚 co-author, <strong>Emmalin Buajitti</strong>, a recent graduate of the Master of Public Health program at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.</p> <p>鈥淭his emphasizes the enormous importance of 鈥榮ocial determinants鈥 of health.鈥</p> <p>Only 10 per cent of the variation was further explained by classic risks like heavy drinking, obesity, smoking and sedentary lifestyles, and another 10 per cent was unexplained, but possibly due to other factors such as lack of access to medical care, Buajitti says. While there would be crossover between risk factors and poverty, she says, income&nbsp;was still a far more powerful predictor of premature death than lifestyle alone. And lower premature mortality among immigrants is not surprising given that Canada chooses people in good health to migrate here.</p> <p>The most common cause of premature deaths, not surprisingly, was heart disease 鈥 the same as for non-premature deaths in Ontario. Men died early at higher rates than women, as did people in more northern, rural and underserved parts of the province. The Toronto and Ottawa metropolitan areas had the lowest rates of premature mortality.</p> <p>To identify death patterns on a granular level, Buajitti and her co-authors, including <strong>Laura C. Rosella</strong>, an&nbsp;associate professor at Dalla Lana and Big Data expert, divided the province鈥檚 local health regions into 76 sub-regions. They used Bayesian models to map early deaths to known risk factors such as smoking and poverty.&nbsp;</p> <p>鈥淭he techniques we used aren鈥檛 that new 鈥 they鈥檝e been established, especially among geographers, for some time,鈥 says Buajitti. 鈥淭he opportunities come from bridging disciplinary gaps 鈥 using geography to answer better public health questions&nbsp;and identify patterns more precisely. In Canada, these techniques haven鈥檛 been applied on this scale.鈥</p> <p>The geography of health is an important area to study, she says, because there鈥檚 a connection between a person鈥檚 health and the overall health of the population in their community.</p> <p>鈥淵ou can be doing quite well personally, not smoking or drinking heavily, but your neighbourhood might not have enough doctors or parks and sidewalks, or it might be a food desert,鈥 she says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to answer the impact your neighbourhood experience has on health and premature mortality so that public health interventions can be targeted where they鈥檙e needed most.鈥</p> <p>Buajitti and her co-authors&nbsp;<a href="https://pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12963-019-0193-9">published the results of their research</a>&nbsp;on Aug. 1 in the journal&nbsp;<em>Population Health Metrics.&nbsp;</em></p> <p>The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.&nbsp;<span class="current-selection" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: transparent; position: absolute; white-space: pre; cursor: text; transform-origin: 0px 0px; left: 226.768px; top: 1957.01px; font-size: 29.9996px; font-family: sans-serif; transform: scaleX(0.889298);">by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada. However, the analyses,</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: transparent; position: absolute; white-space: pre; cursor: text; transform-origin: 0px 0px; left: 226.768px; top: 1993.07px; font-size: 29.9996px; font-family: sans-serif; transform: scaleX(0.907294);"><span class="current-selection">conclusions, opinions, and statements expressed herein are </span></span></p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 08 Aug 2019 17:48:04 +0000 noreen.rasbach 157495 at 'The scale of grief and loss is terrible': Meet the 老司机直播 student fighting to prevent opioid overdose deaths /news/scale-grief-and-loss-terrible-meet-u-t-student-fighting-prevent-opioid-overdose-deaths <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">'The scale of grief and loss is terrible': Meet the 老司机直播 student fighting to prevent opioid overdose deaths</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/0528TentSavesLives001.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=MZoAFpYL 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/0528TentSavesLives001.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=JB_HhQVE 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/0528TentSavesLives001.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=XyL6qdOV 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/0528TentSavesLives001.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=MZoAFpYL" alt="Gillian Kolla, PhD candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>noreen.rasbach</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2019-07-18T10:45:17-04:00" title="Thursday, July 18, 2019 - 10:45" class="datetime">Thu, 07/18/2019 - 10:45</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">Gillian Kolla, a PhD candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, has helped save scores of lives with oxygen tanks and naloxone kits at Moss Park (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/heidi-singer" hreflang="en">Heidi Singer</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/city-culture" hreflang="en">City &amp; Culture</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/opioids" hreflang="en">Opioids</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/cities" hreflang="en">Cities</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/dalla-lana-school-public-health" hreflang="en">Dalla Lana School of Public Health</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/graduate-students" hreflang="en">Graduate Students</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/public-health" hreflang="en">Public Health</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-subheadline field--type-string-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Subheadline</div> <div class="field__item"> </div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p><i></i>A young woman with blonde hair and a nose ring peers curiously at the camera. A middle-aged man with grey hair leans against a tree. A young man grins.</p> <p>These photographs are scattered on the memorial wall of the Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site. They represent only a fraction of the overdose deaths the Moss Park community has suffered so far this year. The overdose crisis has taken the lives of more than 10,300 people in Canada in the past three years, but right now Toronto鈥檚 illegal opioid supply is more lethal than ever.</p> <p>In 2016, heroin began to give way to the far more potent fentanyl, and overdose deaths soared. Then, starting in January of this year, lab tests showed carfentanil, an even more powerful opioid not meant for humans, had entered the supply.</p> <p>鈥淭he scale of grief and loss is terrible,鈥 said <strong>Gillian Kolla</strong>, a PhD candidate at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health who has helped save scores of lives with oxygen tanks and naloxone kits. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 think of people who are homeless and use drugs as having strong communities, but they do. And these communities have been devastated.鈥</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/0528TentSavesLives004.jpg" alt="Naloxone kit in the Street Health Overdose Prevention Site"></p> <p><em>A naloxone kit at&nbsp;the Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site&nbsp;</em><em>(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)&nbsp;</em></p> <p>Starting in the summer of 2017, Kolla worked alongside other volunteers from the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society to open Ontario鈥檚 first supervised consumption site. For 11 months, they operated unsanctioned in tents, and later a trailer, in Toronto鈥檚 Moss Park, stocked with naloxone kits, oxygen tanks and sterile injection equipment. Over 150 volunteers 鈥 many of them people with lived or current experience of drug use 鈥 supervised more than 9,000 injections, and saved the lives of 251 people.</p> <p>They also served on the province鈥檚 Opioid Emergency Task Force, helping the provincial government develop its model for overdose prevention sites. The following summer, by the time the Moss Park operation moved to an officially approved and funded space across from the park, eight legal supervised injection and overdose prevention sites were already operating in the city.</p> <p>Kolla, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, is a fierce advocate for street-involved drug users. Her current research examines the delivery of harm-reduction services to people who use drugs by meeting them where they live and use drugs, aiming to improve their health in the process.</p> <p>鈥淕illian is unique in how she has blended her skills as a service provider, academic researcher and advocate,鈥 said her PhD thesis supervisor, Professor <strong>Carol Strike</strong>. 鈥淪he鈥檚 amongst the talented few with the skills and credibility to truly partner with people who use drugs to address issues like overdose, criminalization of drug use and housing that impact their lives.鈥</p> <p>Kolla has been working with people who use drugs for over a decade, starting in Montreal with homeless and street-involved youth. She moved to Toronto to work on her master鈥檚 degree in public health at Dalla Lana&nbsp;in 2007, and began her PhD a few years later. When the overdose crisis hit, Kolla was doing field research on a novel harm-reduction program that delivered education and equipment directly in the spaces where people gather to use drugs. She saw first-hand the increased overdoses caused by the contamination of heroin with more potent opioids like fentanyl.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/0528TentSavesLives002.jpg" alt="'Cuz' in the Street Health Overdose Prevention Site"></p> <p><em>For Cuz, a 45-year-old man originally from Nova Scotia,&nbsp;the sense of community in the tents felt healing&nbsp;(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)&nbsp;</em></p> <p>In the fall of 2016, when overdose-related&nbsp;deaths started climbing across Canada, Vancouver activists opened the first guerilla overdose prevention site by erecting a tent in an alley. The following summer, after years of frustration trying to open supervised injection sites in Ontario, Toronto activists decided they didn鈥檛 need anyone鈥檚 permission to save lives, either. They formed the Toronto Overdose Protection Society (TOPS), bought a few tents and set up in Moss Park.</p> <p>鈥淲e didn鈥檛 know it at the time, but Toronto Public Health released data months later showing we opened the tents at the epicentre of the city鈥檚 overdose crisis,鈥 said Kolla, who is a member of the co-ordinating committee for TOPS and was responsible for compiling usage data. 鈥淚n our very first month in the park we reversed 15 overdoses, in only 18 days. And it just continued from there.鈥</p> <p>Community members who spent time in the park helped with tent setup and takedown every day. Cuz, a 45-year-old man originally from Nova Scotia, pitched in regularly.</p> <p>At the time, Cuz was overdosing and ending up in the hospital frequently. Once he was in a coma for a week. With fentanyl, he said, there鈥檚 no way to know what you鈥檙e getting. It scared him to think of the girl he watched overdose after injecting just $2 worth of it. Cuz began hanging out at the site, and started to use in the tent. He spent time learning about safe injection practices, but also enjoying the feeling of safety 鈥 knowing he was not going to die or be arrested in that moment.</p> <p>For Cuz, the sense of community in the tents felt healing.</p> <p>鈥淚t鈥檚 the love, the caring, and all the little things,鈥 he recalled. 鈥淭here was nothing those guys wouldn鈥檛 do for me. It was the tent 鈥 I didn鈥檛 know it at the time, but I knew I was excited. They say it takes a village. When the first tent opened up out here, that was the first time it felt like a village. There wasn鈥檛 a sense of community for me until then.鈥</p> <p>Said Kolla: 鈥淭here was something so special about being in the park. People were bringing food, hanging out and chatting in front of the tents. It was really powerful and it fostered a sense of community that has continued to this day.鈥</p> <p>Today, Cuz still uses fentanyl, but he鈥檚 careful to follow safe injection protocols, and to take care of himself by eating and most importantly getting enough sleep. He fears death a lot less.</p> <p>He volunteers at a downtown supervised consumption site, enjoys his son and new baby granddaughter, and is thinking about starting a roofing company that could employ drug users able to do strenuous work.</p> <p>鈥淲hen you feel like you鈥檙e making a difference you don鈥檛 want to stop that,鈥 he said. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e creating happiness, safety and nurturing. I took myself out of a certain crowd and saw that each time I helped out, things got better for me.鈥</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/0528TentSavesLives005.jpg" alt="Supplies in the Street Health Overdose Prevention Site"></p> <p><em>Supplies in the&nbsp;Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)&nbsp;</em></p> <p>Overdose prevention sites are about saving lives first and foremost. And yet during her Saturday-night shifts in the Moss Park tents, Kolla found herself constantly on the phone, trying to find people spots in shelters, helping them get into detox or connected to other social services.</p> <p>鈥淩esearch shows that people who use supervised injection sites are more likely to access treatment than those who don鈥檛 use these services,鈥 she said. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 important that treatment is not seen as the goal. When people are forced into treatment it鈥檚 much less effective than when they choose to go on their own.鈥</p> <p>She believes the tents sent a powerful message that the community 鈥渃ared whether people who use drugs lived or died. And there was much more community support than we anticipated. If we tweeted that it was hot out and we needed more water, cars would pull up with bottles of water. Union members helped us get a trailer in the park and then wire it for electricity so we could stay warm through the winter. Neighbours donated food and we raised a lot of money on GoFundMe.鈥</p> <p>Even law enforcement has been largely supportive, Kolla recalled. 鈥淧olice see the deaths. They鈥檝e even tweeted out drug warnings and advised people to use supervised consumption sites,鈥 she said. 鈥淭here has been a sea change in the way they relate to harm reduction. It鈥檚 amazing how far they鈥檝e come.鈥</p> <p><strong>Jen Ko</strong>, the nurse who co-coordinates the Moss Park Overdose Prevention Site, got her start as a volunteer in the park. 鈥淢y experience was really transformative,鈥 she said. 鈥淚n health care, there鈥檚 a lot of lip service to being patient-centred. This was radical health care. It felt like such a privilege to be in this space.鈥</p> <p><img class="migrated-asset" src="/sites/default/files/0528TentSavesLives003.jpg" alt="Needle box Moss Park neighborhood of Toronto"></p> <p><em>The needle disposal box in the downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Moss Park (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)&nbsp;</em></p> <p>Today, there are nine supervised consumption sites in Toronto, but people are still dying when they inject at home, at night, or in places like Scarborough and Etobicoke that are far away from the downtown core, where most of the services are located.</p> <p>The next frontier in harm reduction, Kolla said, is advocacy for the decriminalization of drug use, and the establishment of safer supply programs.</p> <p>鈥淐riminalization is negatively impacting how quickly we are responding to the overdose crisis,鈥 she said. 鈥淩ight now, the drug supply is very dangerous, and there鈥檚 no way to get around this unless we get a safer supply to people at risk. And this isn鈥檛 something that can happen in a small pilot project: We are seeing catastrophic death rates. We need to roll out safer supply in big cities and small towns 鈥 and we need to roll this out yesterday.鈥</p> <p><em>This article is part of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health鈥檚 2018/19 Annual Report. For more highlights, </em><a href="http://www.dlsph.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/UTDL005_AR_Final_WEB_Single_lowres-2.pdf#page=2"><em>check out</em></a><em> the full report. </em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Thu, 18 Jul 2019 14:45:17 +0000 noreen.rasbach 157307 at