Welcome to Health Providers Against Poverty (HPAP)

Working Poor Shut out of Dental Cash

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/822195--working-poo...

Ontario’s Health Minister says there is no money to improve the oral health of Ontario’s 500,000 working poor.

Deb Matthews said the province doesn’t have the resources to keep a promise of providing a dental plan for Ontario’s impoverished adults. Instead, the $135 million earmarked three years ago for affordable, routine care for adults struggling to pay the pricey fees of licensed Canadian dentists, will go to their children.

“There are many ways we would love to be able to spend our money,” Matthews said Thursday in an interview. “It would be wonderful to expand to adults. But it’s at tremendous cost. We are facing a lot of challenges. We couldn’t do everybody. We’re focusing on children and I’m excited. I think it’s a big step in the right direction.”

Get PDF version.

Comparison of minimum income programs in OECD countries

The report can be found at:

http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2009doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT00008AF2/$FILE/JT03276695.PDF

Almost all OECD countries operate comprehensive minimum-income programes for working-age individuals, either as last-resort safety nets alongside primary income replacement benefits, or as the principal instrument for delivering social protection. Such safety-net benefits aim primarily at providing an acceptable standard of living for families unable to earn sufficient incomes from other sources. This paper provides an overview of social assistance and other minimum-income programes in OECD countries, summarizes their main features, and highlights a number of current policy challenges.

CMAJ: Mayoral Candidate Assails Activist Doctors

In the CMAJ today, Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford says, "A doctor is there to be a doctor, not to advocate for the poor ... That’s frightening, when I think about it. You can’t have people in the medical field doing that."

Guess what ... we can, we should, and we do ... and it's evidence-based!

For the full article, see:

www.cmaj.ca/earlyreleases/30apr10-mayoral-candidate-assails-activist-doc...

Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts. New book published and available free online.

Dennis Raphael and Juha Mikkonen have just released an exciting new contribution to the Canadian literature around social determinants of health.  This book is simple, concise, and action-oriented, and provides an excellent introduction to the evidence and to what to do to address social determinants.  The entire book is availble free at:

www.thecanadianfacts.org

Hamilton Spectator finds significant income-related health disparities

Hamilton Spectator finds glaring gaps in morbidity and mortality (life expectancy differences of 21 years!) depending on income and neighbourhood in this series of articles.

http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/751295

For interactive city maps, see:

http://www.thespec.com/sections/codered

Ontario minister says doctors among those to blame for cut in special diet allowance

Click here for the article: Ontario minister says doctors to blame

The province’s decision has angered some doctors, nurses and other health care professionals, who are calling on their associations and the public to mobilize.

“It’s completely unconscionable,” says Dr. Gary Bloch, a family physician with St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, and a member of Health Providers Against Poverty.

“It significantly impacts the potential for people with disabling medical conditions to improve their health. This supplement has been a lifeline for a lot of my patients who live on welfare,” Bloch says.

Poverty and the Provincial Budget: Health, Jobs and Resistance

An OPIRG - University of Toronto event on responding to the Ontario 2010 budget, and the impact to social assistance rates:

Tuesday, April 6 @ 7pm
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE)
252 Bloor St. West, Room 5260

Featuring:
John Clarke, Organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty.
Michael Hurley, President of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions
and Vice-President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Ontario.
Dr. Roland Wong, Occupational and Community Medicine Physician.

Sponsored by:
Ontario Public Interest Research Group (OPIRG-Toronto) www.opirgtoronto.org
University of Toronto Health Studies Students' Union
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) www.ocap.ca
Health Providers Against Poverty www.healthprovidersagainstpoverty.ca

OISE is an accessible location.

Contact: opirg.toronto@gmail.com.

Toronto Star, March 28, 2010: A Way to Reduce Poverty and Health Costs

www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/786115--a-way-to-reduce-poverty-...

The cancellation of the Special Diet Allowance program is a blow to the health and dignity of people living in extreme poverty. The government has managed to hide a cut to welfare benefits behind a moralistic campaign to paint people living on social assistance as no-good fraudsters. This is an astonishing reiteration of the misconceptions about welfare recipients we've heard for decades.

As a physician working largely with people on welfare, I have yet to meet one person who wants to stay on social assistance, or one welfare recipient who doesn't struggle every day to feed themselves. Worse, when people have chronic medical conditions, their need for decent food increases and their capacity to meet that need diminishes.

This government could meet both its goals of reducing poverty and reigning in health-care costs in one go: by increasing the incomes of people living in the most extreme poverty. Poverty is the most powerful determinant of health, and where poverty is reduced, health costs will be reduced as well.

Under this government, money is being "saved" by increasing the depth of poverty experienced by the poorest Ontarians, which will worsen their health. This is not a sound economic choice, it is a sad moral one.

Gary Bloch MD, St. Michael's Hospital Health Centre