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The Edmonton Social Planning Council is disappointed that the latest “innovations” announced for Alberta’s health care system and the responses of critics and supporters alike fall short of addressing the real challenges facing the system.

“The proposed innovations on reducing waiting lists and allowing people to be able to pay for fancy hip replacements are limited to changes within the illness-care system,” says Phil O’Hara, Research and Policy Analyst with the Council. “That demonstrates a narrow view of health care,” he adds. “When we talk about health care it ought to be about how we can stay healthy and avoid the costs, to ourselves and the system, of getting sick or being injured in the first place.”

It is evident to the Council that this important perspective is not on the public radar. We believe that if the province is serious about innovation and a “Third Way” it will need to address the factors outside of medicine and health care that contribute to our health and well-being – “the causes behind the causes of ill health” (World Health Organization). It will mean integrating into public policy the well-documented evidence pointing to the variety of social and economic factors that are the primary influencers on our ability to stay healthy. These include whether we are poor or well off, the state of our housing and other aspects of our physical environment, and the education levels we are able to achieve. 

The Edmonton Social Planning Council wants this approach to health care to be on the decision-makers agenda. To initiate that process we have published a Discussion Paper on the subject: Creating Social and Health Equity: Adopting an Alberta Social Determinants of Health Framework (available on our website at www.edmspc.com). We are taking our message to politicians in all the parties and to officials in a number of government ministries. We are also advancing this with other health professionals, with those in the human services sector, and with the media.

“There needs to be a shift in the “innovation” debate,” says O’Hara, author of the Discussion Paper. “We need to move toward a focus on the prevention of illness and chronic disease – that’s the only way we’ll really be able to achieve having ‘the healthiest population’ in the country. It’s also a shift that is essential for health care reform in Alberta to succeed.”

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