Health Medical Info For Canadians

If you are Canadian, if you care about your health, here’s a site to bookmark, eh? It’s called Healthy Debate, (here's their Facebook page), and it’s chock full of articles and other information about health and medical care in Canada. The header is “unbiased facts, informed opinions”; in a media landscape with so much uninformed opinion, this site matters. “Healthy Debate is led by a core team that includes patients, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, paramedics, physician assistants, journalists, business leaders, managers, policy advisors and researchers… to provide you with unbiased evidence, and informed opinions, about health care issues in Canada”

Healthy Debate is non-commercial, and offers good perspectives on health care in Canada, on both personal and institutional levels. The site is simply laid out, with navigation to sections such as Articles, Opinions, Personal Health Navigator and The Rounds Table (good moniker).

First up: everything you want to know about vaccinations in Canada.

Other articles and opinion pieces:

Room for improvement on patient surveys.

Does eating more probiotic bacteria really make us healthier?

Is marijuana and seniors a bad combination?

Colorectal cancer screening can save lives - so why don't more Canadians do it?

How can we expect family doctors to do their job in a system that's running on empty?

Does hearing loss increase the risk of dementia?  (And read our take on hearing loss, A Cute Earring?)

And here are two important articles; both are first-person accounts of caring for a dying spouse. One was written by former CBC reporter (and Physician Assistant) Maureen Taylor, who lost her husband to brain cancer; the other by former journalist Paul Adams. They’re poignant and tough to read, but they tackle the kind of subject that we all have to address in our lives, especially as we grow more aware of our own mortality.

-Blaze Krautner, LB