A version of this commentary appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, the Vancouver Province and the Hill Times It all started when the two of us sat down over a cup of coffee. As a family physician and endocrinologist, we stand on opposite sides of a large chasm called patient wait times, and we both started […]
It’s time we stepped up our system of drug surveillance If you take prescription medications, what conditions do you take them for? Are they working for you? Have you experienced any negative side-effects from them? It may surprise you to know that answers to these critical health questions aren’t well documented for most Canadians. Yet […]
There’s no denying that the food environment influences the diets of Canadian families, and that food industry marketing is part of that environment. Canadian children are now developing chronic diseases that were almost exclusively seen in adults when I went to medical school a few decades back. There has been a big shift in our […]
Interviews with Dr. Robyn Tamblyn and Dr. Jenna Wong Medications can be life-saving. But they are only as good as our knowledge about them. The time is right for a national drug surveillance system to kept better track of our experiences with medications. Jenna Wong recently received her PhD from the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics […]
Many Canadians can hardly wait for the day that the recreational use of marijuana becomes legal. As a medical doctor, I’m far less enthusiastic. I worry about two things: the experimental nature of marijuana in medical practice and the public health consequences of legalized marijuana. Before you write me off as overly prudish or an […]
It was surreal, really. About 30 women gathered for a Thursday luncheon at the Manitoba Club, enjoying a chicken caesar salad while their guest speaker held the floor with a PowerPoint presentation to underscore his main points. Suddenly, the screen was filled with a photo of male genitals covered in ulcers, or “chancroids,” the more […]
A version of this commentary appeared in the Globe & Mail, Huffington Post and the Brandon Sun With Canada’s 150th birthday squarely in the rear-view mirror, we should now look to our future. Our current government has been staking much on an “innovation economy” — if the regular speeches by various ministries are anything to go […]
The Research Chair Pocosa/Policies, Knowledge and Health hosted a round-table discussion in Montreal on November 26, 2015 about the use of administrative data in the health care sector. Health data is still largely under-exploited by researchers and civil society. How can these databases be used to better analyze and reform the health care system in Canada? Are administrative databases a […]
Talking to the media for a scientist may be a scary prospect. Yet some are calling on their peers to have their voices more often heard in the media in order to counter balance the voices of think tanks and lobbyists.
