Imagine a world where businesses are measured not only by how much money they make, but also by how many lives they improve. For generations, society viewed business and social change as two separate worlds. Businesses were expected to generate profits, while charities and nonprofits were expected to solve social problems. One focused on financial […]
There is a quiet assumption we often make about change: that once a good decision is made, it will continue. If something works — if it is efficient, beneficial, and well-supported — then surely it will be sustained, but experience tells us otherwise. Across many areas of life, from personal habits to large-scale systems, the challenge is rarely starting […]
Canada is widely recognized as one of the world’s most ethnically diverse countries, with residents reporting more than 450 ethnic or cultural origins in the 2021 Census, according to StatsCan. Walk into almost any federal building, hospital or provincial office and you’ll see that diversity reflected in the faces of the people working there. But here’s a question worth sitting with: does representation mean […]
“Before this income, I was not living, I was just existing… (with this income) at least I can pay my rent” – A 66-year-old senior, recipient of the Old Age Security Pension We are all heading toward the same destination! You might wonder which destination? That’s valid. The answer is growing old! Aging is something that, as human beings, we are expected to experience if we are lucky enough. When you think about aging, various […]
Imagine learning that more than 75% of sexually active individuals will contract an infection that can negatively impact their health, and in some cases, even cause cancer. As scary as that sounds, this is the case for the Human Papillomavirus, or as many know it, HPV. With more than 200 different types of the virus, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in Canada and worldwide. Importantly, however, not all HPV infections are dangerous, with more than 90% resolving on their own, never showing any symptoms or requiring treatment. With this, you might be wondering about the other […]
What comes to mind when you read “rite of passage”? An auditorium full of excited undergraduates throwing their square hats into the air? A sword being tapped on either shoulder of a kneeling knight? Someone having their head shaved on their first day of boot camp? A bar or bat mitzvah? Maybe a retirement party with questions […]
What do I mean by a mental health crisis? It’s a situation where someone’s distress becomes too overwhelming to manage on their own. They require immediate support. What happens next can shape whether they feel supported and connected to care or pushed further away from it. There are other definitions of mental health crisis but that’s what I will mean in this series of blogs. The central role of police […]
A clinic visit can change the course of a family’s month. Sometimes a year. When Precious’ mother became sick in western Kenya, nobody rushed immediately to the hospital. They could not. First came the conversations people have when money is tight: maybe the fever would pass, maybe they could wait another day, maybe medicine from the local shop would be enough for now. Treatment […]
In hospitals, time is often the difference between an effective treatment and a worsening infection. When a patient presents with a bacterial infection, clinicians need to answer a simple but critical question: which antibiotic will actually work? Yet today’s standard diagnostic tests for antibiotic susceptibility can take 24 to 48 hours to deliver results. During […]
When two inpatients at a Canadian hospital both tested positive for a gene capable of defying carbapenems, one of medicine’s last-resort antibiotics, it looked like an outbreak. It wasn’t. The gene in question was VIM, a well-known resistance gene that infection control teams dread. Finding it once is concerning. Finding it twice, in the same facility, days apart, raises […]