Healthy Debate

Healthy Debate is a platform dedicated to sharing stories and insights about health care in Canada, featuring voices from those most affected—physicians, patients, caregivers, health journalists, academics, and advocates. By focusing on these insiders, we offer in-depth coverage of the complexities and challenges within the Canadian health care system. We take pride in delivering engaging and straightforward op-eds and reported features that delve into the details of health care in Canada. This creates a space for the public to learn, engage in discussions, and debate health care issues, while also envisioning future possibilities for improvement.

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We need virtual care that cares for everyone

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.
Is the red dye ban a case of virtue signalling?

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.
Health professionals issue urgent call for climate action and for their pension plan to step up

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.
Rising HIV cases in Canada: Putting the numbers in perspective

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.
Ontario’s health care needs courageous leadership, not political appeasement

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.
Barriers to Paxlovid are exacerbating our health inequities

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.
The future of prescriptions: Pharmacogenomic testing on the verge of revolutionizing health care

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.
AI levelling playing field in rehabilitation medicine

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.
‘Your body, my choice’: American politics and the looming threat to reproductive freedoms in Canada

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.
Peto’s Paradox: Large mammals may hold clues in preventing cancer among humans

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.