On vous a introduit à Joyce, la toute première récipiendaire du Prix 3M de leadership en santé, il y a quelques mois. Son travail et les efforts de l’équipe du Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House sont maintenant sujet d’un rapportage mené par Radio Canada. Vous pouvez visionner la troisième partie de la série “Les artisans du changement” ici.
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The attached letter/update from the International Union for Health Promotion & Education provides a fine summary of health promotion advocacy with the WHO in regards to Non-Communicable Diseases (Chronic Diseases) prevention and social determinants of health. The advocacy request is for health promoters to call on our government to act on the Declaration that was signed at this meeting, and to “build support for the Declaration among our networks and regions, in civil society and in the media.” Here’s a piece of the letter that introduces the issues:
The IUHPE has identified NCD prevention as a strategic priority and the IUHPE recognized that this UN meeting was a potential watershed for increased global attention to health promotion. Our Union was very active in the months preceding the UN meeting in preparing a ‘key messages’ document and in widely disseminating this to promote our common call to action.
On Monday December 5th, Health Nexus and 3M Canada had to pleasure of presenting the first 3M Health Leadership Award to Joyce Rock from the DTES Kitchen Tables Project. The award’s two finalists, Gordon Smith and Watler Hossli were also present, thanks to some technological magic.
The event was a wonderful afternoon that encompassed the award’s
energy and focus on community health. The keynote presentation by Michael Jones was very thought-provoking and inspiring and left many participants reflecting on their own talents and roles within their communities.
Ms. Rock, Mr. Smith and Mr. Hossli are wonderful ambassadors of the 3M Health Leadership Award and we are looking forward to another exciting and inspiring year with the call for nominations in March, 2012.
Dr. Arlene King made the recommendation in her annual report, saying the province needs to set clear goals for every health benefit it wants to achieve. She’s also urging Ontario to apply a “health lens” to every program and policy to clarify the potential impact of everything the province does.
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The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
Since Campaign 2000’s first report in 2001, the Canadian economy has more than doubled. But the incomes of the country’s poorest 20 per cent of families have remained stagnant, the report notes.
Housing advocates for years have wrestled with how to handle this population. But now, as their ranks swell – and have grown to include working and middle-class families – our existing conception of who counts as homeless and who doesn’t seems inadequate to cover the vast challenges faced by people who aren’t living off the street but who are living inside motels, neighbors’ basements and friends’ living rooms.
The Network ― made up of maternal, newborn and child health experts, medical practitioners and civil society organizations ― aims to support Canada’s efforts to improve maternal, newborn and child health by increasing coordination and collaboration among partners.
Le Réseau, qui regroupe des spécialistes de la santé des mères, des nouveau-nés et des enfants, des médecins praticiens ainsi que des organisations de la société civile, vise à appuyer les mesures prises par le Canada pour améliorer la santé des mères, des nouveau-nés et des enfants, en favorisant la coordination et la collaboration entre les partenaires de ce secteur.
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Our feature article in today’s OHPE is Sharing Practice-Based Knowledge – A Documentation of Regionally Organized Communities of Practice:
With all of the demands on public health practitioners, it can be challenging to assess the relevance of published scientific evidence, and to incorporate and apply this evidence into one’s daily work. Often this evidence lacks important contextual information which is essential to understanding the enablers and barriers to implementing an intervention in a real-world setting. Increasingly a number of agencies engaged in knowledge exchange are seeing the value of harnessing and disseminating practice-based or tacit knowledge, that is, the practical knowledge that is gained through being involved in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of health promotion interventions. This article describes the deliberate efforts that are being made through the Program Training and Consultation Centre’s (PTCC) Learning through Evidence, Action and Reflection Networks (LEARN) project to formally document and share the practical knowledge and expertise of Ontario public health practitioners.
The full index to today’s issue — aside from the feature article and its related resources, there are ten events, four announcements and five job postings — is at http://www.ohpe.ca/epublish/1/v2011n732.
Le Bloc-Notes a suscité de l’intérêt par l’entremise du site Web de Nexus Santé!
En effet, quelques étudiants en promotion de la santé à Liège en Belgique ont découvert le site de Nexus Santé pour s’abonner sur le champ au Bloc-Notes.
Notamment, Nicolas, réalise son travail de fin d’études sur le thème du tabagisme.
Ce qui tombe à point car l’article de fonds du dernier Bloc-Notes traite sur le lien entre le tabagisme et le diabète. Nous souhaitons tout le succès à Nicolas et ses collègues dans leurs études en promotion de la santé!.
Ronald Dieleman
From the Toronto Star, November 22, 2011, Opinion section, page A27
Almost six years ago, Stephen Harper scrapped a national early learning and care program, putting an end to arguably what would have been the most important contribution to nation-building since universal health care. In a report that came out Tuesday, Fraser Mustard (who passed away a week ago) and two colleagues suggest that when it comes to supporting early child development, we may be back to building a better Canada one province at a time.
Using the thin veil of “choice” for parents, Harper substituted a so-called child-care program to provide parents 100 bucks per month for each child under 6 — enough to buy Aunt Emma a nice gift for minding the kids — and seriously impeded the ability to build consistently available and affordable early learning and care centres across the country that so many Canadian parents desperately need.
Given that Harper has turned Ottawa into an evidence-free zone — with his crime bill as the latest example — he ignored the social, economic and scientific evidence regarding the important return on investing in early learning. Many thought Canada would be left even further behind as a result.
Not so. Several provinces decided to proceed without the promised federal partnership and money. Quebec was already committed to an innovative approach to family-friendly policies, including upgraded parental leave and a low-fee child-care program that pays for itself from the revenue generated by increased participation of women in the workforce.
Then Ontario stepped up big time with its universally available full-day learning for 4 and 5 year olds. And experts and advocates across the country are taking notice of other provinces’ foray into early learning for pre-first graders, including P.E.I.’s remarkably quick modernization of its child-care services as it rolled out full-day kindergarten for 5 year olds; Manitoba’s publicly managed early learning programs, and other efforts across the country to develop child-centred curriculum and to improve the wages and working conditions of the educators that do this most important work.
So back to Tuesday, when Mustard’s colleagues Margaret Norrie McCain and Kerry McCuaig tabled the last report of the McCain/Mustard Early Years trilogy and with it an idea that could enable a bottom-up approach to getting Canada back on track in spite of the lack of federal leadership.
The report provides an important update on the science and economics regarding the wisdom of investing in early childhood education. It also tells a story of provinces playing leap frog regarding quality advances on implementation, making it difficult for any one province to claim bragging rights for very long as the Number 1 early education leader. It also points out where problems lie within and between provinces.
This is all good because when it comes to building a better Canada, the top indicator of national progress ought to be reflected in how we support the development of the youngest of our young in a consistent manner across the country. Is there a better measure? Don’t think so. Shouldn’t it mean the same to be a child whether in Kamloops, Sudbury or a small fishing village in Newfoundland or on reserve? Either we mean it when we say “our kids are our future” . . . or not!
So here’s the big and important idea in this latest Early Years report — the development of an Early Childhood Education Index that would provide a regular, independently produced report on how each province and territory is doing according to 19 indicators across five categories: governance, funding, access, learning environment and accountability.
This “no place to hide” reporting has the potential of ensuring a long-term commitment to developing high-quality early childhood educational opportunities for Canadian children and families by catching provinces doing things right so that peer jurisdictions can learn from each other.
While there are exceptions such as Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty, who seems to thrive on feedback about how to continuously improve the components of lifelong learning, this level of scrutiny is not going to be universally popular among decision-makers. Which brings me to the critical importance of independent development, ownership and reporting of the index results.
The story behind the story of the Early Years Study 3 is the manner in which a dynamic network of Canadian foundations, including among others, Atkinson, Lawson, Chagnon and McCain, have stepped up to support this latest report. It likely will be up to them to figure out how best to ensure the independence and sustainability of this index idea. Governments won’t take it on; and if some do, it’s time for big-time caution because it would likely be to ensure the index doesn’t become too direct in its “observations” and reporting.
So it’s heartening to see several provincial governments filling the void left by the short-sightedness of our current federal government. Our collective future looks a bit brighter with the potential power of this new Early Childhood Education Index idea and the continued intellectual capital and commitment of the many thousands of Fraser Mustard disciples.
Some day, another prime minister will run to the front of the parade to take credit for a nation better off because of the consistency of the high quality of support across Canada regarding the development of our children.
Charles Pascal is a professor of human development at OISE/University of Toronto and a former Ontario deputy minister.
Le point sur la petite enfance 3 documente les justifications sociales, économiques et scientifiques sur lesquelles repose l’investissement dans l’éducation de la petite enfance. Elle présente également l’Index de l’éducation de la petite enfance, qui surveille le financement, les politiques, l’accès et la qualité propres aux programmes d’éducation de la petite enfance.
Le point sur la petite enfance 3 : Prendre des décisions, agir se fonde sur le travail de l’Étude sur la petite enfance : Inverser la véritable fuite des cerveaux (1999). Ce rapport de référence a changé les discussions et a suscité l’intérêt général sur la manière dont les expériences en début de vie façonnent l’architecture et la fonction du cerveau, entraînant des conséquences tout au long de la vie pour les individus et la société. Early Years Study 2: Putting science into action porte sur le cadre politique nécessaire pour améliorer les conditions de la petite enfance, notamment la santé de la population.
Pour plus d’information, ou pour télécharger le rapport: http://pointsurlapetiteenfance.org/fr/