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February 15, 2016 |

Drug diversion – a more polite term for theft of narcotics by hospital employees, nurses, doctors, pharmacists and other health professionals – is the dirty little secret hospital administrators and health leaders prefer not to talk about.

The problem is so pervasive that a new non-profit organization has sprung up in the U.S. to help hospitals outsmart their internal thieves. It’s called the International Health Facility Diversion Association (IHFDA) and its inaugural international conference will take place in Cincinnati, Ohio in September.

Jelena Atanackovic and Ivy Lynn Bourgeault Diversity, Immigration and Integration April 16, 2014

Unlike most other temporary foreign workers in Canada, participants in the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) are eligible to apply for permanent residence after completing 24 months of paid employment within a period of four years. The LCP was introduced in 1992 to address a lack of live-in workers to care for dependent people. It is estimated that a total of 17,500 former caregivers, their spouses and dependants will be admitted as permanent residents in 2014.

Few studies have addressed the economic and social integration of LCP workers after the program or explored how different types of caregiving — for children, disabled people or older adults — affect integration. This study helps fill these gaps through extensive qualitative research, including interviews and focus groups with 58 live-in caregivers.

October 13, 2015 For seven decades, Hospital Employees’ Union members have been dedicated to delivering quality public health care to British Columbians every single day. For nearly a decade, HEU has supported five occupational subcommittees – clerical, support, trades and maintenance, patient care technical and patient care – consisting of rank-and-file members, Provincial Executive (P.E.) members and staff advisors. 

September 15, 2016 in

By Robert DeVet

Seldom has a provincial austerity budget been as decisively rejected as happened this spring in Newfoundland and Labrador. Angry citizens took to the street in record numbers, filled townhalls across the province, wrote letters, called in to radio shows, and in true Newfoundland fashion made fun of a hapless Premier Dwight Ball. The anti-budget coalition was broad and diverse, and the protesters were very determined.

Today, at Anishnawbe Mushkiki Aboriginal Health Access Centre in Thunder Bay, Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care Dr. Eric Hoskins, alongside his colleagues David Zimmer, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, Michael Gravelle, Minister of Northern Development and Mines, and Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day, made a ground-breaking announcement of the largest investment in Indigenous health care in Ontario’s history. This investment includes the establishment of up to 10 new or expanded Indigenous-centred primary health care teams that include traditional healing to serve Indigenous communities across the province, similar to the existing network of 10 Aboriginal Health Access Centres (AHACs).

Unique in Canada and made in Ontario, AHACs are Indigenous community-led primary health care organizations that embed Indigenous cultural practices and teachings at the heart of everything they do. They provide a comprehensive array of health and social services to Indigenous communities across Ontario. These services include primary care, traditional healing, mental wellness, addictions services, cultural programs, health promotion programs, early years programs, oral health care, community development initiatives, home and community care and social support services. Importantly, they work on healing the impacts of intergenerational trauma. Being community-governed, AHACs are able to respond to the specific geographic, socioeconomic and cultural needs of the diverse Indigenous communities they serve.

May 11, 2016

Citizens around the world are mobilizing this Saturday to assert their right to speak out, organize, and take action. As part of a Global Day for Citizen Action, people will be asked whether they are free to raise their voice and call for change.

Applying lessons learned from the harsh realities of the past and taking full advantage of the window of opportunity presented by the new government, the Voices alliance is putting forward an agenda for action to create enabling conditions for full, free civic engagement by Canadians from every background and belief.

July 20, 2016

HEU has partnered with GLISA International and the Canadian Centre for Gender & Sexual Diversity to host a special Pride 2016 event, “Unions and the Pride Movement”, on Friday, July 29 at XY Nightclub (1216 Bute Street in the heart of Davie Village). They’re bringing Stonewall activist Martin Boyce to Vancouver to share his experiences in advocating for LGBTQ+ rights over the past four decades.

We are making change and building a stronger labour movement that recognizes the struggles of all people facing inequality in the workplace and society. The Rise Up! conference is an opportunity for union activists to come together and explore equality and fairness for all. We can empower each other by acknowledging our struggles, celebrating our gains, and sharing our stories. As human rights activists, we celebrate diversity and use our collective power to create real change for all Canadians. Share your story. Be the change. Live the change.

BMJ 2016; 353 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i2161 (Published 20 April 2016) Cite this as: BMJ 2016;353:i2161

Paul Aveyard, professor of behavioural medicine1, Derek Yach, executive director2, Anna B Gilmore, professor of public health3, Simon Capewell, professor of public health and policy4

Yes—Paul Aveyard, Derek Yach

Jul 15, 2015

Speakers at a CUPE symposium on privatization drew on a wide range of Canadian and international evidence to reach a clear conclusion: privatizing seniors’ homes in Newfoundland and Labrador makes no economic sense, and puts vulnerable seniors at risk. The symposium took place on the eve of the annual gathering of Canada’s premiers, being held this year in St. John’s. It drew a diverse crowd of advocates, elected officials, policy-makers and concerned citizens.

The Toronto Aboriginal Research Project (TARP) is the largest and most comprehensive study of Aboriginal people in Toronto ever conducted. 

The study examined such diverse topics as: poverty and social services, the Aboriginal middle class, the two-spirited community, Aboriginal youth, women, men and seniors, housing and homelessness, culture and identity, the Aboriginal arts scene, law and justice and urban Aboriginal governance.

The respected economist Andrew Dilnot, chairman of the Commission on Funding of Care and Support—the body that recently reviewed the funding system for care and support in England—emphasised that the current system was in dire need of an overhaul

The Dilnot inquiry, which reported in July (BMJ 2011;343:d4261, doi:10.1136/bmj.d4261), recommended a cap on individuals’ personal contributions to the costs of social care of around £35 000 (€41 000; $55 000) over their lifetime. When that cap was reached, people would be eligible for full state support.

At the moment, the means tested threshold at which point people are required to fund the full costs of their care is £23 250, but the commission recommends increasing this to £100 000.

As a recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine by Bob Kocher and Nikhil Sahni showed, labor productivity growth in the health care sector actually fell by .6 percent between 1990 and 2010, a result which corroborates the findings of a 2010 paper by heath economist David Cutler.

the most promising answer seems to lie in allowing basic medicine to be practiced in more places and by an increasingly diverse set of practitioners

Kocher and Sahni write that a “different quantity and mix of workers engaging in a higher value set of activities” is necessary to increase productivity, with one of their suggestions being to relax licensure and scope of practice requirements for nurse practitioners and other non-doctor health care workers

The performance of hospitals and care homes is to be subject to a new tier of inspection criteria that will include basic standards of care, such as whether an individual has been given adequate food and drink, a senior adviser at the Care Quality Commission has said.

Alan Rosenbach, special policy adviser at the CQC, said that providers that fail to deliver the basics will be fast tracked to prosecution under new powers awarded to the regulator. The new powers will include the ability to place providers into a “quality failure regime.”

the government wanted the regulator to include basic elements of care in its inspection regime.

Written By Wes keller

The provincial government will not be able to live up to its promises of a transformed health-care system that meets the diverse care needs of Ontarians without hiring more nurses, says the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO).

Too many registered nurses (RN) across this province are experiencing excessive workloads, and job openings for new grads have dried up,” said Rhonda Seidman-Carlson, president of RNAO. According to RNAO’s calculations, 12.9 per cent of newly graduated RNs were unemployed in 2012. A further 4.1 per cent were working outside of nursing and looking for nursing employment.

EHealth: Each province doing its own thing has made digitization costs balloon  By Jules Knox, Special To The Province September 24, 2013

Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on digitization but governments continue to struggle to address the diverse needs of healthcare practitioners. The vision of a pan-Canadian electronic health record for each patient, which once seemed so important, is now further off than ever.

B.C. Civil Liberties Association policy director Micheal Vonn is concerned that Canada Health Infoway has an exemption from freedom of information requests related to its spending.

Toronto Star Sun Apr 26 2015

The powerful relationship between poverty and health has been documented for nearly two centuries. We have long known that a person's economic position is the strongest predictor of their health status. Being poor means dying sooner and dying sicker. A Toronto Public Health report released earlier this week concludes that poverty is literally imprinting itself on the lives of Torontonians. The findings presented in the report are grim. Over the past decade, health inequalities between the rich and the poor have persisted. In some cases, they have grown wider. Opportunities to be healthy in Toronto remain as unequally distributed as ever. The report rightfully attributes these inequalities to the social determinants of health - a diverse range of factors including income, education, employment and housing.

We live in a divided city and the deepening of economic cleavages has become a defining feature of our civic landscape. Income inequality is on the rise. Housing is becoming less affordable. Neighbourhoods are becoming more polarized. And the cost of living has far outpaced individual earnings. In Toronto, as elsewhere, the social determinants of health have suffered significant decline. As the report makes clear, the poorest among our city's residents have borne the greatest part of this burden. These trends have affected the health of the poor in countless ways. They have constrained access to quality health care. They have increased susceptibility to harmful behaviours, such as smoking. They have compromised the adequacy and stability of housing conditions. They have restricted access to nutritious foods. They have heightened exposures to daily stress and adversity that get under our skin and harm not only our minds but our bodies as well. In fact, research has shown that economic conditions underlie almost every pathway leading to almost every health outcome.

Women on the March until we are all free: Rally for Equality and Solidarity

In front of the NB Legislature, Fredericton, 12 noon, Friday, April 24, 2015

New Brunswick will join the International World March of Women 2015 in a global day of action on Friday, April 24, which marks the second anniversary of the horrific Bangladesh factory collapse that killed 1,135 workers. The focus of this year’s march is precarious work.

Toronto Star Tue Jul 28 2015

Jody Kearns doesn't like to spend time obsessing about her Parkinson's disease. The 56-year-old dietitian from Syracuse, N.Y., had to give up bicycling because the disorder affected her balance. But she still works, drives and tries to live a normal life. Yet since she enrolled in a clinical study that uses her iPhone to gather information about her condition, Kearns has been diligently taking a series of tests three times a day. She taps the phone's screen in a certain pattern, records a spoken phrase and walks a short distance while the phone's motion sensors measure her gait. "The thing with Parkinson's disease is there's not much you can do about it," she said of the nervous-system disorder, which can be managed but has no cure. "So when I heard about this, I thought, 'I can do this.'"

Smartphone apps are the latest tools to emerge from the intersection of health care and Silicon Valley, where tech companies are also working on new ways of bringing patients and doctors together online, applying massive computing power to analyze DNA and even developing ingestible "smart" pills for detecting cancer. More than 75,000 people have enrolled in health studies that use specialized iPhone apps, built with software Apple Inc. developed to help turn the popular smartphone into a research tool. Once enrolled, iPhone owners use the apps to submit data on a daily basis, by answering a few survey questions or using the iPhone's built-in sensors to measure their symptoms.