Presentations

Urban areas are the hot spots of global warming. Extreme heat, alongside flooding and wildfire, is a key risk to the health and well-being of Canadians. The situation is growing more dangerous, driven by irreversible climate change— Canada is warming, on average, at twice the global rate.

Urgent action is required now to manage risk and avoid worsening impacts – and ultimately fatalities.

The good news is that heat-related illness and death are largely preventable with knowledge, education, and adaptive action. However, resilience to extreme heat cannot be achieved by relying on air conditioning alone.

This presentation will provide an overview of new national guidance, representing input from over 60 subject matter experts, outlining practical actions that Canadians can undertake to reduce risks from extreme heat including:

Food systems are the complex web of activities and interactions that include food production, transportation, processing, retailing, preparation, and finally disposal. While these food systems are generally thought of as largely agricultural or rural, Pothukuchi and Kaufman’s landmark paper in 1999 highlighted the importance of urban food systems in particular, and encouraged urban planners to incorporate food system considerations into municipal and regional plans. Areas of focus included: preserving agricultural land, preventing and processing food waste, environmental outcomes related to food production, processing, distribution, and storage, and ensuring adequate access to healthy food. This webinar will be an overview of food system planning interventions that have been implemented and evaluated since 1999, with a specific focus on outcomes related to environmental sustainability, economic development, availability of healthy food, individual food behaviours, and nutrition-…

Health Canada published the revised lead drinking water guideline in 2019. The document included recommendations for sampling protocols to assess lead exposure such as random daytime and fixed stagnation time sampling. The selection of a sampling protocol will depend on the objective of the sampling (e.g. typical exposure) and building type (e.g., single-family dwellings, large buildings, schools) and factors such as plumbing configuration and water use/consumption patterns. Indigenous Services Canada conducted a sampling survey in Alberta Region to determine community lead levels in schools and daycares ahead of the guideline changes, to identify potential sources of lead, and to evaluate compliance with the updated guideline.

France Lemieux Head, Materials and Treatment Section Water and Air Quality Bureau, Health Canada

France Lemieux is the Head of the Materials and Treatment Section in Health Canada’s Water and Air Quality Bureau. She holds a Bachelor's degree…

Abstract

Almost two years since the start of the pandemic, significant psychosocial impacts are still observed in the Canadian population. The results of various surveys, as part of a study carried out by Université of Sherbrooke with the collaboration of international universities, have depicted the association between various risk/protective factors and mental health in times of pandemic. The most recent survey was conducted in October 2021 (in Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland) among a large and representative sample of adults. Special attention will be paid to the evolution in anxiety and depression and its associated risk/protective factors, as well as to a newly explored concept called “pandemic fatigue”. In addition to these results, some interesting comparisons between the attitudes, perceptions and responses towards the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change will be made. Lessons in disaster risk management learned over the past two years can indeed be utilized to…

The effects of climate on the environment and human health impacts have been increasingly observed with some negative health outcomes shown through mortality and hospitalization data. Warning systems are put in place by public health authorities to intervene during episodes of extreme weather events. In Quebec, the SUPREME system that was developed by the Institut National de Sante Publique du Quebec (INSPQ) has been used for a decade to document relevant and real-time information for Quebec’s extreme weather hazards and their associated heat and all-cause mortality. However, other extreme events such as cold in Nordic regions or air pollution in large cities are also important to study. It is therefore important to adapt this system using appropriate methodologies so it can be applicable to specific health impacts that may be linked to other extreme weather hazards. In this presentation, Dr. Fateh Chebana will focus on cold-mortality and hospitalisation data in Quebec, as well as…

The population of adults aged 60-plus is growing rapidly around the world, expected to more than double to more than two billion by 2050, and the World Health Organization has declared 2020-2030 the “Decade of Healthy Ageing” in response to this demographic shift. Although much of the conversation around healthy aging has focused on individual risk factors and health behaviors, the built, natural, and social environments all play significant roles. This webinar will describe indicators of age-friendly environments at the community level, particularly in low- and middle-income countries and in rural settings, as well presenting findings from an indicator-development effort within the global Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology study (PURE). In light of the increased vulnerability to COVID-19 at this stage of life and the additional restrictions on social interactions that have resulted, we’ll also discuss what is known about roles for community design in reducing social…

The risk of contracting coronavirus varies among people and places, making some British Columbians more likely to be exposed to COVID-19 than others, due to socio-economic factors, occupational hazards, personal behaviours or other factors that are amplified in places characterised by increased risk of transmission. To better understand this, we developed a vulnerability model to identify differences in COVID-19 risks across neighbourhoods, visualized in a series of maps on a public-facing dashboard that indicate where to focus policy and public health efforts. In this presentation we discuss how we worked with patient partners and some of the actions that have been informed by our maps. Dr. Valorie Crooks, Professor, Simon Fraser University Leah Rosenkrantz, EH & KT Scientist, NCCEH

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Presentation Slides:

Drawing from years of experience navigating barriers in the social, cultural, and built environments as a person with a disability, this episode will focus on the importance of engaging people with diverse lived experiences at the outset of the design process as a step towards adopting a more inclusive approach to the built environment. By introducing the concept of disability-led design and incorporating lived-experience examples, this webinar further elucidates the power that is traditionally embedded and distributed within the creative process and intends to advocate for people with disabilities to be seen not just as end-users of design, but as drivers of design. The added context of a global pandemic brings new issues for safe accessible design to the forefront. Surfaces that require physical contact can no longer be used in the same way, but the sanitation of such surfaces can be a complicated issue. These are situations that the health community and society as a whole need…

Presented by: 

David McVea, Public Health Physician, Environmental Health Services, BC Centre for Disease Control Jeffrey Trieu, Epidemiologist, BC Centre for Disease Control

Indoor radon is an important cause of lung cancer in British Columbia (BC), responsible for about 15% of lung cancer deaths. The risk of radon-attributable lung cancers varies across the province, however, depending on geological factors as well as housing characteristics. Accurately assessing the risk posed by residential radon in BC requires sufficient measurements taken from representative samples of homes in each region.

To support this work, as well as other policy and research efforts, the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) has established the British Columbia Radon Data Repository (BCRDR), which houses over 14,000 anonymized indoor radon measurements from across the province, including over 11,000 from residences. Measurements are collected from federal,…