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Archives for April 2020

Lessons from Community Service Learning during a Pandemic

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By: Sarah Peddle, Service Learning Program Manager, Dalhousie Medical School 

The global community is in unprecedented times.  As the Program Manager for the Service Learning Program, I mindfully consider the impacts on our students and the communities they are involved in as part of this program. We are navigating new ways of engaging and identifying plans with students to complete their community-based experiences.  

The Service Learning Program matches second year medical students with not-for-profit community-based organizations. The program requires students to spend time in the community from September to December and deliver a small project with the organization from January to April.  Many students were able to complete their service learning experience off-site with the support of their community partner.  

This pandemic, while full of challenges, has provided time to pause and consider how we work and how we engage with each other. I reached out to our community partners and asked them to share how COVID-19 has impacted their organization and the clients that they serve. Here are some of their insights. 

NaviCare/SoinsNavi

NaviCare logo

Summary provided by Dr. Shelley Doucet, Co-Director 

NaviCare/SoinsNavi is a research-based navigation centre for children/youth aged 25 years or younger with complex care needs and their families in New Brunswick.  Our nurse patient navigator has continued to offer support by coordinating patient care, connecting clients to resources that are still available, directing clients to virtual services where possible, being a resource for the team, and informing families about COVID-19 related services and other services available to meet their needs. The need for resources and education in the community has increased during the pandemic.  We moved all in-person outreach activities and meetings to online settings.  We encourage children/youth, families and care providers to reach out for support during this difficult time. 

Arthritis Society

Arthritis Society logo

Summary provided by Nik Harris, Community Engagement Coordinator, Maritimes: 

Arthritis Society employees are temporarily working-from-home across the country during this time, actively continuing to support the 6-million Canadians living with arthritis. Our focus shifted to highlighting new and existing online-based supports to the arthritis community. 

Brigadoon Village 

Brigadoon logo

Summary provided by Jenn Ross, Director of Operations: 

At Brigadoon Village, we are offering virtual programming to our campers and families 

  • BrigaBroadcast – twice a week virtual session on Zoom for our campers 
  • Brigadoon Leadership – Campers sign up for a 4 week program to participate on weekly leadership sessions (to replace our cancelled March Break Leadership Camp)
  • Briga At Home – Activities posted on our social media and website for people to participate in on their own time – https://brigadoonvillage.org/camps/brigaathome/  

Fresh Start Services  

Fresh Start Services logo

Summary provided by Melanie Vautour, Executive Director: 

Fresh Start Services provides support for women and children in crisis situations.  The biggest impact for our agency and our clients has been social distancing for our homeless and sex workers.  We closed our office because we could not guarantee distancing and cleaning methods with walk-in traffic. We are providing more mental health support and re-assurances that we still care and are trying to protect THEM from US as we are more apt to introduce the virus to them. We are also advocating with landlords and tenants to advocate for flexible policies to support our clients. 

Moving Forward

Imagine this pandemic experience without your cell phone, computer and internet to connect with people and services. Imagine being unstably housed and all services and community access points are closed. There is growing research that is exploring the impact of the determinants of health throughout the pandemic.   

For more information, follow the important work of the  National Collaborating Centre for the Determinants of Health with weekly panel discussions on equity related issues.   http://nccdh.ca/blog/entry/stigma-discrimination-health-impacts-and-covid-19 

The National Collaborating Centre for Public Health also has a recourse repository for  Public Health Ethics pertaining to COVID-19: http://www.ncchpp.ca/823/COVID-19.ccnpps 

Stay safe and take care of each other. 

COVID-19 Awakens A New Global Health

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By: Shawna O’Hearn, Phd (c), MSc (OT), MA, Director, Global Health 

April 10, 2020  

In less than 3 months, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone across the globe.  As I write this, nearly 1.9 million people have been confirmed to have the infection and nearly 120,000 people are known to have died from the coronavirus.  As we manage and eventually bring the pandemic under control, there will be a profound change in global health.   

First, we will no longer need to demonstrate and explain the interconnections of global health across the globe.  Perhaps one of the most significant impacts that we need to understand and explore further is the significance of the determinants of health.  We are witnessing the importance of investing in health as essential to investing in the economy.  In addition, we will see health being re-positioned on the political agenda as the public is aware of governments’ role in health. 

From an education perspective, the last decade has been witness to unprecedented growth in global health programs in North America at post-secondary education institutions.  After the pandemic, I suspect global health will become more popular and attract large number of trainees to disciplines such as public health, epidemiology, infectious diseases, and data science.  The COVID-19 pandemic has made it imperative to train all students for a global state of mind and we will see global health filtering into all disciplines strengthening the significance of the interrelatedness of the determinants of health. 

With respect to global health leadership, there has been a push to reflect inclusivity.  Before the pandemic, global health was typically led by experts (predominantly men) in high-income countries (HICs) failing to address reciprocity and bi-directional partnerships. With the COVID-19 pandemic, low and middle income countries (LMIC) seem to be handling things better than HICs which have more resources and global health experts. Will there be an openness from HICs to learn from LMICs? 

Covid-19 has taught us that health is the basis of wealth, that global health is no longer defined by Western nations and must also be guided by Africa and Asia, and that international solidarity is an essential response and a superior approach to isolationism. We may emerge from this with a healthier respect for the environment and our common humanity.

lona Kickbusch, Gabriel M Leung, Zulfiqar A Bhutta, 
Malebona Precious Matsoso, Chikwe Ihekweazu & Kamran Abbasi 
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1336  

 The current pandemic highlights inequality while revealing an interconnected global society. Viruses don’t respect national borders, and the rapid spread of this disease is due, in part, to the ways power and privilege play out in the provision of healthcare worldwide.  We must not be afraid to discuss and explore the difficult conversations that underline power and privilege.  We must include those who live at intersectional social locations, such as race, indigeneity, age, (dis)ability, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, refugee status, class and religion in our planning, policy development and health care delivery.   

Yet the examples from recent history do not demonstrate lessons learned: the Ebola crisis in three African countries in 2014; Zika in 2015–6; and recent outbreaks of SARS, swine flu, and bird flu. Academics who studied these episodes found that they had deep, long-lasting effects on gender equality.  In her book Invisible Women, Caroline Criado Perez notes that 29 million papers were published in more than 15,000 peer-reviewed titles around the time of the Zika and Ebola epidemics, but less than 1% explored the gendered impact of the outbreaks.  

Women in Global Health (WGH) is an organization, built on a global movement that brings together all genders and backgrounds to achieve gender equality in global health leadership. They are promoting five asks to help confront power and privilege, which undermine global health by preventing women from contributing equally to the fight against challenges like COVID-19. 

  1. Include women in global health security decision making structures and public discourse 
  2. Provide health workers with safe and decent working conditions 
  3. Recognize the value of women’s unpaid care work 
  4. Adopt a gender-sensitive approach to health security data collection and analysis 
  5. Fund women’s movements to address critical gender issues 

For more information:  

Stay Connected… 

To assist you in our common goal to save lives in the midst of this global, public health crisis, there are many resources from around the world. Over the next months, we will provide key resources in relation to global health and COVID-19 with a particular lens on our programs and the unheard voices impacted by the pandemic.   

Please reach out to the Global Health team if you would like to discuss pandemics and global health.  We miss seeing you and look forward to virtual engagement over the next few months. 

In the meantime, keep an eye on York University’s Global Health portal for equity related information on COVID-19 

Dahdaleh COVID-19 Global Health Portal  

  • The Beta Portal provides regular updates and is structured around five topics. As the pandemic develops, so does our understanding, and the Portal may need to be revised in the future. Our commitment is to offer the highest quality of information and insight available at this time. 
  • https://dighr.yorku.ca/covid19/topics/#equity 

 

 

First Annual General Meeting of the Black Medical Students’ Association of Canada

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By: Ola Sobodu, Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick (DMNB) student
Congregation of Black Medical Students Association of Canada

Congregation of Black Medical Students Association of Canada

On March 1st, 2020, I witnessed the first ever congregation of Black medical students representing all 17 medical schools in Canada. It was the inaugural annual general meeting (AGM) of the Black Medical Students Association of Canada (BMSAC). The BMSAC was created (by two outstanding students of University of Manitoba- Helen Teklemariam, and Yohanna Asghedom) to foster community partnerships to address the unique challenges faced by Black patients and health care professionals, through a focus on education, health improvement, and promoting the practice of culturally safe care.

Medical students will attend the Black Physicians’ Association of Ontario Annual Health Symposium on Saturday February 29th 2020 to learn about racial disparities in health care and engage in discussions on topics pertinent to the community.

The weekend was as much fun as it was educational. There were various informative sessions including a review of Diabetes and A1c management with a focus on Black patients, a talk on the strides in diversity that have been made in Canadian medical institutions over the past decade, and an interactive advocacy session. I was able to make valuable connections with fellow medical students, network, and learn from physicians of various specialties. Indeed, it was beyond inspiring to be among a group of such talented individuals with a shared passion and identity.

Participants getting to know each other

Participants getting to know each other

During the AGM, I was also elected as the Atlantic regional director on the association’s first executive board. Through this position, I hope to work to create a community of support for black medical students in the Atlantic provinces, and to contribute as a community, to the continuous improvement of healthcare in Atlantic Canada through advocacy and volunteer work.

Ola Sobodu

Ola Sobodu

Overall, it was a wonderful experience and I remain grateful to Dalhousie for providing financial support that allowed me to have been in attendance.

As a part of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation funding the Dalhousie Indigenous and African Nova Scotia Conference bursary program is designed as an initiative for Indigenous students and African Nova Scotians at Dalhousie University. The goal of the program is to enable students to attend extracurricular programing, such as conferences, as part of their professional development.

The National Black Medical Students’ Association of Canada (NBMSAC) is a student-led organization whose mission is to create a collaborative network of Black medical students across Canada. The association was created to raise awareness about the growing, albeit limited, number of Black students within medicine in Canada, and to address the unique challenges faced by Black patients and health care professionals.

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