The Star made some minor editorial changes, but the basic message holds:

http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/227676

Jeff


Quoting Jeff Denis <[log in to unmask]>:

> Here's a letter I just submitted to the Toronto Star. Let's hope they print
> it.
>
> Jeff
>
> End Poverty and Engage Community to Reduce Hospital Spending
> Re: Ontario hospitals caught in budget squeeze, by Ian Urquhart, June 18,
> 2007
>
> 	Once again, Ontario hospitals are contemplating service cuts in order to
> balance their budgets, and once again, community groups are rightly opposing
> them.
>
> 	Is there a way to end this recurrent conflict, reduce hospital spending and
> improve Ontarians’ health? Abundant research evidence suggests that there is:
> the short answer is to focus on preventing illness and injury and thereby the
> need for hospital services.
>
> 	The most effective way to do this is to tackle the social determinants of
> health – poverty, inequality, racism, pollution. If the Governments of Canada
> and Ontario made a stronger effort to build affordable housing, invest in
> regulated non-profit childcare, expand job training, establish living wages,
> support new immigrants, and clean up the environment, they would go a long
> way
> to containing medical costs and improving population health.
>
> 	There is something hospitals themselves can do too. Taking a cue from the
> Wellesley Hospital, a former teaching hospital in downtown Toronto closed by
> the Harris Government in 1998, they can give clients and community members a
> more meaningful voice in hospital decision-making. When the Wellesley created
> a
> powerful Neighborhood Relations Committee to improve hospital-community
> relations, Community Advisory Panels to guide specific services, and
> governance
> positions for community activists, it not only improved its responsiveness to
> community needs but also erased its fiscal deficits.
>
> 	These are not new suggestions. But they do bear repeating, for, with few
> exceptions, governments and hospitals have taken many steps backward and only
> baby steps forward in recent years.
>
> Jeff Denis
> Toronto, ON
>
>
> --
> Jeff Denis
> PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology
> Doctoral Fellow, Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy
> John F. Kennedy School of Government
> Harvard University
>
> "The principle of organizing our society for the benefit of all the people
> and
> not for a privileged few - that is still here and that is a principle to
> which
> we adhere." - Tommy C. Douglas
>
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