Hello all SDOH-ers...
you are invited to a 'Fireside Chat' relating Climate Change and Health
to the need for addressing root causes of poverty. (description below)
(Fireside Chats are: free pan-Canadian discussion for leaders in
community health and issue related sectors re: pressing community health
issues via a telephone/internet conference)
hosted by Community Health Research Unit, University of Ottawa in
partnership with Environmental Health Division, Peel Public Health,
For more information and to register: www.chnet-works.ca and in the left
column, click on Fireside Chats (see info re: how to register)
access the expertise of the presenter and colleagues from across Canada
- with no registration or travel fees - or green house gas emissions.
We hope you will join in the discussions and pass the info along to your
colleagues.
Sincerely
Dot Bonnenfant, CHNET-Works! Animateur

Here's the info for you - please pass along to contacts and colleagues:

WHY ADAPT? A critical analysis of climate change adaptation options for
public health in Canada

Date & Time: Friday, 27 March 2009, 01:00 PM — 02:30 PM (Eastern Time)
Registration Deadline: Friday, 27 March 2009, 01:00 PM (Eastern Time)

The impacts of climate change in Canadian communities, as elsewhere,
pose new and growing challenges not only because of unmitigated global
warming but also due to the failure of governments at every level in
Canada to address the root causes of poverty.
People with low socio-economic status, and racial minorities bear a
disproportionate burden of environmentally-related ill-health on both
local and global scales (Health Canada 2003; Howze 2004; Spengler 2002).
Therefore, addressing the underlying factors that cause vulnerability
should be a primary feature of adaptation policy.
But it's not.
Work on adaptation so far has focused on responding to the physical
impacts of climate change, rather than sufficiently addressing the
underlying factors that cause vulnerability to it.

Using a critical analysis of adaptation through Foucault’s theory of
governmentality, this presentation will attempt to demonstrate how
adaptation has been driven more by a governmental rationality tied to
the ability of governments to promote aspects of laissez-faire
capitalism (Litfin, 2000), than on protecting those most vulnerable to
impacts.
The future course of adaptation policy in public health, hence, will
require a monumental paradigm shift by adequately addressing the
underlying causes of vulnerability through a community development
process based in the principles of health promotion - enabling people to
increase control over, and to improve, their health through healthy
public policies, supportive environments, and community actions. (WHO, 1986)

Advisor on Tap:
Mark Pajot, Research and Policy Analyst, Environmental Health Division,
Peel Public Health, Ontario

To leave, manage or join list: https://listserv.yorku.ca/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=sdoh&A=1