On Mon, 29 Dec 1997 11:44:36 -0500 d.raphael wrote:

> From: d.raphael <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 11:44:36 -0500
> Subject: This time they published it!
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> In the Globe and Mail, December 29, 1997.
>
> Letter to the Editor:
>
> Lest Globe readers believe that it is only the less well-off that suffer from
> the effects of inequality (Gap grows between rich, poor, Dec. 23) an
> impressive body of public health research indicates that the well-off show
> detrimental health effects as well.
>    Policies that transfer resources from the less well-off to the wealthy,
> such as we are now seeing in Canada, are associated with decreasing social
> cohesion and increased societal malaise.
>    This malaise can take many forms including increased death and illness
> rates, violence, and as is already evident in the case of Metropolitan
> Toronto, greater use of food banks and shelters for the homeless.
>    In the end, all members of a society, both the disadvantaged and the
> well-off, experience these effects through a process of what social
> epidemiologists call "the symptoms of disintegration."  In fact, after 20
> years of increasing inequality in Britain, the best well-off in Britain now
> show poorer health than the least well-off in Sweden.
>    While the well-off in Rosedale and other such communities may reap the
> economic benefit of increased investments, they begin to become subject to
> the same threats to health -- deteriorating health care and school systems,
> crime in the streets, unsafe traffic --  as do the rest of Canadians.
>
> Dennis Raphael
> Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences
> University of Toronto
>
>
>
>
>   ***************************************************
>   From new transmitters came the old stupidities.
>   Wisdom was passed on from mouth to mouth.
>             -Bertolt Brecht
>   ***************************************************
>
> Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor and Acting Director,
> Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
> Department of Public Health Sciences
> Graduate Department of Community Health
> University of Toronto
> McMurrich Building, Room 101
> Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
>
> 416-978-7567
> fax:416-978-2087
>
>
Congratulations, Dennis. Thanks for standing up, and for your tenacity. Happy '98.
Elizabeth