$2.10 for the public's health

By DR. ELINOR WILSON AND DR. MAUREEN LAW 
Thursday, May 12, 2005 Updated at 12:18 AM EDT

Excerpt:
...According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, in 2004, Canada spent about $130-billion on health, or more than $10,000 per Canadian household. However, only about 2.1 per cent of our health spending goes to public health. In other words, for every $100 we spend on health in Canada, some pocket change - a toonie and a dime to be specific - goes into public health; for every 100 or so people working on the problem, a couple of lonely souls are working on the public-health side.

What does this mean? It means there are a lot of resources committed to putting out fires, and a relatively small amount of investment to prevent fires. If we were a business, we'd be spending a lot of money on after-sales damage control and warranty work, but relatively little on reducing defects at the source. That means a lot of money treating illness that could have been prevented, as well as heavy losses from absent employees.
...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050512.wcomm0512/BNStory/National/

(or, http://tinyurl.com/d6hzz)

Robyn Kalda
Health Promotion Information Specialist
OPC Health Promotion Resource Centre
(416) 408-2249 x226
[log in to unmask] 

-------------------
Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]


To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header --  to [log in to unmask]
SIGNOFF SDOH

DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.

To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.
SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname

To post a message to all 1000+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.

For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]

To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
SET SDOH DIGEST

To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html