Canada is entering unchartered territory as it regularly experiences record high temperatures. It is predicted that this trend will continue and periods of extreme heat in Canada will be more frequent, intensify, and likely to be five times more deadly within the next few decades. However, our understanding of the effectiveness of commonly recommended heat-mitigation strategies to protect vulnerable Canadians and Canadian workers remains incomplete, limiting our ability to make evidence-based decisions on the best strategies to implement.

We showed that the body’s response to heat is impaired in healthy adults as young as 40 years. This impairment is worse in older adults and in those with common chronic disease such as diabetes and hypertension. In these individuals, heat tolerance is reduced as the body is unable to cool itself via the evaporation of sweat, placing them at increased risk of heat-induced illnesses or death.

Given that Canada’s population and…

Indoor radon is an important cause of lung cancer in British Columbia (BC), responsible for about 15% of lung cancer deaths. The risk of radon-attributable lung cancers varies across the province, however, depending on geological factors as well as housing characteristics. Accurately assessing the risk posed by residential radon in BC requires sufficient measurements taken from representative samples of homes in each region.

To support this work, as well as other policy and research efforts, the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) has established the British Columbia Radon Data Repository (BCRDR), which houses over 14,000 anonymized indoor radon measurements from across the province, including over 11,000 from residences. Measurements are collected from federal, provincial, and regional partner agencies as well as private radon professionals.

In this seminar, we describe the repository and highlight two uses for the data. First, the BCCDC has…

It is becoming increasingly established that large extractive projects impact the social, economic, and cultural determinants of health for resource-based communities throughout rural Canada. In Northern British Columbia, the economic benefits of mining and pipeline construction can be accompanied by significant pressures on social infrastructure, economic instability, and increased crime rates. As Northern Health Authority and academic researchers work to address these impacts, we needed accessible tools to translate complexity to a broad audience of stakeholders: community leaders, policy-makers, regulatory bodies, and industry proponents. As a result, Northern Health is using Knowledge Translation tools to include these multivalent determinants of community health in Impact Assessment and policy discussion.

This webinar will discuss the process that led to the creation of our Knowledge Translation tools and how they have been used to communicate the interactions of…

Le Canada continue d’enregistrer des éclosions de maladies infectieuses d’origine alimentaire, dont les conséquences peuvent être graves pour les groupes vulnérables comme les enfants, les personnes âgées, les personnes immunovulnérables et les femmes enceintes. S’il est possible d’attribuer rapidement certaines éclosions à une source localisée et facile à maîtriser, la mondialisation des systèmes alimentaires entraîne cependant d’autres éclosions à grande échelle plus complexes, qui sont parfois difficiles à analyser. Dans l’idéal, les enquêtes sont menées par de grandes équipes interdisciplinaires qui 1) retracent les personnes affectées et les sources communes d’exposition, 2) isolent l’agent pathogène en cause, 3) en déterminent la ou les sources, 4) contiennent l’éclosion et 5) communiquent les résultats obtenus aux partenaires de la santé et au public. Les méthodes d’enquête se basent sur trois sources d’information : les analyses de laboratoire, les données épidémiologiques…

Drawing from years of experience navigating barriers in the social, cultural, and built environments as a person with a disability, this episode will focus on the importance of engaging people with diverse lived experiences at the outset of the design process as a step towards adopting a more inclusive approach to the built environment. By introducing the concept of disability-led design and incorporating lived-experience examples, this webinar further elucidates the power that is traditionally embedded and distributed within the creative process and intends to advocate for people with disabilities to be seen not just as end-users of design, but as drivers of design. The added context of a global pandemic brings new issues for safe accessible design to the forefront. Surfaces that require physical contact can no longer be used in the same way, but the sanitation of such surfaces can be a complicated issue. These are situations that the health community and society as a whole need…

This webinar examines how transportation planning decisions affect social equity and public health, ways to evaluate these impacts, and better align transportation policies with community goals. Equity and health policy analysis can be challenging because there are several impacts to consider, and various ways to measure them. Horizontal equity assumes that people with similar needs and abilities should be treated equally; vertical equity assumes that disadvantaged groups should receive a greater share of resources. Social justice addresses structural inequities such as racism and sexism. This webinar will explore various perspectives and impacts, and practical ways to incorporate equity and public health goals into policy and planning analysis. 

Todd Litman is founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, an independent research organization dedicated to developing innovative solutions to transport problems. His work helps expand the range of…

Almost two years since the start of the pandemic, significant psychosocial impacts are still observed in the Canadian population. The results of various surveys, as part of a study carried out by Université of Sherbrooke with the collaboration of international universities, have depicted the association between various risk/protective factors and mental health in times of pandemic. The most recent survey was conducted in October 2021 (in Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland) among a large and representative sample of adults. Special attention will be paid to the evolution in anxiety and depression and its associated risk/protective factors, as well as to a newly explored concept called “pandemic fatigue”. In addition to these results, some interesting comparisons between the attitudes, perceptions and responses towards the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change will be made. Lessons in disaster risk management learned over the past two years can indeed be utilized to enhance risk…