The second issue of the Ontario Health Study’s quarterly newsletter (pdf) is worth reading.
From the Ontario Health Coalition comes a colorful pamphlet “Everything you ever wanted to know about health care and taxes” (pdf). Especially as we head for a provincial election, this is very provocative stuff. You can order multiple copies at http://www.web.net/~ohc/.
At a site called Maytree, there is a fascinating article by Sylvia Cheuy called “Citizens Reshaping Health Care.” Here is a taste: “Over the past month, the importance of citizen dialogue in reshaping the complex issue of health care has been highlighted through two different — but complementary — projects. The first of these projects is a video produced by the Sudbury and District Health Unit that invites us all to reframe more traditional discussions of health care by acknowledging that people’s opportunities for health are largely influenced by broader social and economic conditions that have little to do with access to medical care…” The short video, on the same webpage, invites us to start a conversation about health that doesn’t talk about health care at all!
After the video, the article continues: “The second project is the release of Public Priorities for Ontario’s Health System, a document that outlines a series of recommendations to reform the province’s health care system. What makes this report unique is that it is the work of a randomly-selected citizens’ panel of twenty-eight Ontarians who agreed to spend three weekends together learning about the province’s health care system from a range of experts before reaching consensus on a set of recommendations to ensure that high-quality and publicly funded care is available to future generations…” Go there to read more about this process and its results, and to download a PDF of the document itself.
