CMOH Annual Report (2019)
Panel
Dr. John Garcia, Professor of Practice and Associate Director, Professional Graduate Programs, School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo
Charles Gardner, Medical Officer of Health, Simcoe-Muskoka District Health Unit
Dr. Heather Manson, Chief, Health Promotion, Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention, Public Health Ontario
Dr. Kwame McKenzie, Chief Executive Officer, Wellesley Institute
Dr. Laura Rosella, Canada Research Chair in Population Health Analytics, Associate Professor, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Dr. David Williams, Chief Medical Officer of Health, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
Dr. Williams opened Thursday’s Hot TOPHC Plenary session by introducing a series of three key Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care reports that were released in the past three years and capture the changing landscape of public health focus:
Mapping Wellness: Ontario’s Route to Healthier Communities
Improving the Odds: Championing Health Equity in Ontario
Connecting Communities: Healthier Together
The reports show the evolution of public health moving beyond the population health approach of improving the health of entire populations and reducing health inequities among population groups.
Before inviting comments from the panel, Dr. Williams echoed the message from Day 1 speaker Dr. Howard Pinderhughes by noting, “We need to bring public health back to the community or bring the community to public health.”
The discussion focused on two main themes: data and community.
The Importance of Data
Data plays a crucial role in the community approach to public health. With good local data, public health is equipped to communicate urgent health issues effectively to their communities; however, we need to take ourselves out of the comfort zone to ensure we collect better data and consider:
Are we asking the right questions?
What is working and what needs to change?
How can we use data to shift how we act?
How do we match our activities to our data?
We also need to remember that when our communities play a role in data collection and analysis, they are able to have substantive and real impact on health equity.
The Strength of Communities
The healthiest and happiest communities are those in which people feel connected to others. Being connected to other people is essential to our well-being, yet a growing number of Ontarians feel socially isolated. Community public health looks at neighbourhoods and connections. The evolution of public health from a program-based prescriptive approach to one with more flexibility opens up new opportunities to address community priorities.
The future of public health in Ontario lies in a fundamental shift where we:
Work with our neighbourhoods to identify the issues
Ask what changes need to happen
Look for creative solutions
We must solve the issues and not the problems.
