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Jan 21, 2025 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain |Danyaal Raza
The federal government’s long-awaited Interpretation Letter of the Canada Health Act (CHA), released earlier this month, missed a significant opportunity to modernize medicare. Passed in 1984, the CHA provides the legislative framework for the universal aspects of our health-care system. Though it is a remarkably resilient Act of Parliament, re-interpretations are nonetheless needed to reflect the changing landscape of health care.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain |Sabina Vohra-Miller
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent announcement that the red dye known as erythrosine, FD&C Red No. 3 or Red 3 – previously authorized for use as a colour additive in food and ingested drugs – will be banned in the U.S. will go down in history as the very definition of a red herring.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain |Doris Grinspun
In October, the World Health Organization highlighted findings from The 2024 Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change emphasizing the international health community’s call for “fossil fuel divestment to save lives.”Nurses and other health professionals are no strangers to the ways our overheating planet is wreaking havoc on our health.
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Jan 14, 2025 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain |Dat Nguyen
A recent Health Canada report outlining a 35.2 per cent rise in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection across the country has garnered widespread media attention and sparked concerns about the effectiveness of our public health system.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain |Alykhan Abdulla
Ontario’s health-care system is crumbling. For more than 70 years, Canadians have lauded the Canada Health Act (CHA) as a beacon of universal care, yet it’s woefully outdated in the face of modern challenges. Chronic diseases are surging, hospitals are buckling under demand, and rural areas are often left without adequate access to care. Meanwhile, politicians patch the bleeding wounds with temporary Band-Aid fixes, prioritizing electoral wins over systemic reform.
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Jan 7, 2025 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain |Sabina Vohra-Miller
In Canada, access to Paxlovid, a treatment for mild to moderate COVID-19 infection, has become increasingly challenging, with dwindling stock, significant shortages and concerns about affordability since the end of the federal program last April. In almost all provinces, eligibility criteria have narrowed significantly; in some, even adults between the ages of 60-77 and living in congregate settings do not qualify.
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Dec 9, 2024 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain
Most of us are familiar with genetic testing through products like AncestryDNA and 23andMe to explore our family trees. Some may have already used it to uncover genetic markers for chronic or terminal illnesses. But with the growing trend of using genomic information to personalize care, is there a type of testing that can tell us whether medications we have been prescribed are actually working? It is common for us to assume the medication we are taking will produce the intended beneficial effect.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing rehabilitation medicine, removing barriers inherent in traditional services and offering novel methods to some of the 2.4 billion people the World Health Organization estimates may benefit from rehabilitation. Wearable sensors and risk prediction algorithms are among the applications for patients undergoing cardiac, stroke, neurological and physiotherapy rehabilitation.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain
As nurses and scholars of health policy, we worry that Trump’s victory will embolden the anti-abortion movement in Canada, and pave way for policies that are detrimental to both women and other marginalized communities. Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 6 is deeply concerning to Canadian observers who fear the impact of his policies on Canada’s political landscape, especially regarding reproductive rights.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
healthydebate.ca | Maddi Dellplain
Given their size, you’d think cancer would be more common in elephants, whales and other large, long living mammals. But it’s not; many of these animals have dramatically lower cancer rates than humans. This conundrum has been termed Peto’s paradox, and has raised questions about the evolution of cellular mechanisms that suppress cancer. It has even inspired interest in designing novel therapies for human cancers by co-opting the anti-cancer mechanisms that seem to be highly effective in the wild.
