What a great column! Below is a copy of my email response to Picard.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chrystal Ocean [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: June 22, 2006 8:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: THANK YOU

Dear Mr. Picard:

I have just finished reading the column you wrote for today's Globe and
Mail, "Untreated social ills make for higher medical costs."

My heartfelt thanks to you for expressing what so few with the power of the
pen seem willing to write. Decades of research on the social determinants of
health prove both the social and economic costs to societies that permit
gross income inequality. I don't have to tell you what you clearly already
know. I just wish that more in the media were saying what you are. 

We on the margins need voices like yours hammering the message over and over
and over again. Canada will not be the country I knew as a child until our
governments address the growing gap between the rich and the poor. It will
not prosper in any meaningful sense until this happens.


--Ocean

----------------------------------
Chrystal Ocean, Coordinator.
Wellbeing through Inclusion Socially & Economically
http://www.wise-bc.org/
 
"Policies of Exclusion, Poverty & Health: Stories from the Front"
http://www.wise-bc.org/CVProject/book.html

-------------------
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