Fighting back against health inequity and its origins

Despite rising inequality of market incomes and solemn assertions by governments that compensatory social policies are unaffordable, there are Canadian voices calling for change, within and outside the health research and policy community.

One of the most important of these is the Canadian Women’s Health Network (CWHN), which has just launched a new, user-friendly web site.  CWHN has been going since 1993, functioning as a clearinghouse and information broker on a variety of women’s health issues ranging from depression to domestic violence.  “Health is a human right that, because of poverty, politics and dwindling resources for health and social services, eludes many women” is part of its mission statement; recent links on its website connect users with a feature article and archived webinar on women and alcohol and a Conference Board of Canada report on the generally mid-pack performance of Canadian health care among OECD countries. CWHN is now seeking alternative sources of funding since support from our national government will end in 2013, as part of a larger pattern of funding cuts to women’s health research and advocacy.  Gotta pay for those fighter jets and new prison cells somehow.

Another source of dissenting voices is the trade union movement. The Canadian Auto Workers, now Canada's largest private sector union representing workers in all sectors of the economy, has released a new study that tracked the economic trajectories of 260 workers laid off from three Ontario manufacturing plants. Not surprisingly, the study found that major economic hardship followed; loss of incomes, benefits and security was routine. A long line of Canadian studies going back at least to Paul Grayson's work on manufacturing plant closures in the 1980s (1) has found a similar pattern, as have many in the United States. The landmark Code Red study in Hamilton did not directly track worker earnings, but documented the consequences of manufacturing job losses in a city especially hard hit by deindustrialization. Depending on the future of this blog, a bibliography of key sources on what sociologists call 'downward mobility' as a consequence of economic restructuring, and the health effects, will be provided in a future posting.

Few people now question the fact that earnings and economic opportunity in North America are rapidly polarizing, with consequences for health over the life course and across generations that we can only begin to anticipate. A more dramatic and accelerated preview is now unfolding in parts of Europe, with (for example) official unemployment rates of more than 20 percent overall, and more than 50 percent among young people, in Greece and Spain.  Can economic polarization that consigns a substantial proportion of a nation’s population to permanent uncertainty and insecurity be recognized as a public health issue of overwhelming importance?  Or are the public health professionals whose voices might drive that recognition already too solidly entrenched in the ranks of the comfortable?  Just asking, as they say.

Original Article
Source: chnet-works.ca
Author: Ted Schrecker