Word of the day: Upstream. Nope, not talking about fishing, that’s definitely not our area of expertise. Nor are we talking about an actual stream. Rather, this Decoding Public Health story is centered on a metaphorical stream. Upstream has become a key analogy for how we need to think about health. An analogy that encourages …
We toss around a lot of acronyms in the public health world. Here’s one you may have seen before–SDOH. It’s an acronym with a lot of weight, and one we need to put more emphasis on in order to address health inequities and create a truly healthy society. So what does it stand for and …
We keep writing about things related to public health, talking about the parts that make up the whole. But what is the whole? What the heck is public health anyway? Public health is a very broad and diverse field, consisting of many different areas. Well-known public health initiatives include vaccination programs, smoking cessation campaigns, hand …
It’s Kristy here, ED of the BCCDC Foundation, and for this month’s Decoding Public Health piece, I’d like to turn things to you, our readers, and get you thinking about a few things…and let’s see if we can start a conversation about health. I was invited to present at the Whole Human Summit recently, which …
Harm reduction is a significant and vital part of public health. In the simplest terms, harm reduction is reducing the risks to people doing an activity without requiring them to stop. It is a philosophy, based in human rights, that supports strategies to reduce harmful effects of certain behaviours, through policy and programming. As a …
Last month we talked about health promotion and in the next of our series ‘decoding public health’, let’s talk a bit about health equity. What is it and why is it so important? Health equity means that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to meet their highest health potential. And there should be no …
You have probably heard of health promotion. You may know a little bit about it. You might think of it as a way to change behaviours through social marketing, for example. But did you know the “discipline” of health promotion is actually about so much more? The definition of health promotion is “the process of …
