Health Data Literacy in Canada: The Missing Metric in a Data-Rich Era.

Canada has the longest coastline in the world, stretching over 243,000 kilometres. Representing one-fifth of the world’s freshwater, Canada has over two million lakes and more than 8,500 rivers, all of which eventually drain into one of five ocean basins. Amidst such abundance, there are various considerations and lived experiences that shape people in Canada’s relationship with the ocean, including regional (e.g., coastal, inland), cultural (e.g., Inuit, First Nation, Métis, settler, newcomer), linguistic (e.g., English, French, Indigenous languages), and other important perspectives related to education, food security, livelihoods, governance, politics, economics, and more. Understanding such varying relationships with the ocean (and water) reflects the essence of ocean literacy. The Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition (COLC), a community-driven alliance of over 400 regional and national organizations, networks, institutions, communities, and individuals, led a national study (2019-2020) that was guided by three questions: 1) What is the current state of ocean literacy in Canada? 2) What are the current gaps, barriers, and enablers? 3) What are the key recommendations to advance ocean literacy in Canada? The research findings led to the co-development of Land, Water, Ocean, Us: Canadian Ocean Literacy Strategy (March 2021), making Canada the first country in the world with a national strategy and providing a collaborative framework for action at the start of the Ocean Decade. Now, three years into the Strategy implementation, COLC’s work has led to the launch of several national and international joint action initiatives, such as Ocean Week Canada and the global Ocean Literacy Research Community. A National Strategy Impact Measurement Program has been developed to map, monitor, and evaluate progress and impact key initiatives that are advancing ocean literacy in Canada. This presentation will highlight the collaborative design approach and the intrinsic value of building a bottom-up National Strategy. Key insights and considerations on mobilizing collective action across regions, sectors, and scales while respecting regional and cultural diversity will be shared. Finally, the session will conclude with reflections on the Coalition model and Strategy framework, as well as results-based lessons learned, adaptations, and next steps to advance ocean literacy in Canada and globally.

Health Systems Need to Transform Data Collection to Advance Health Equity.

The Need for Heart Failure Advocacy in Canada

Conflicts of interest: an invisible force shaping health systems and policies

Reviewed by: Paper Talk: A History of Libraries, Print Culture, and Aborginal Peoples in Canada before 1960 Carole Gerson Brendan Frederick R. Edwards. Paper Talk: A History of Libraries, Print Culture, and Aborginal Peoples in Canada before 1960. Lanhan, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2005. 225 pp. The story of First Nations' relationship with European modalities of print and language is complex and dispersed. Bibliography offers one essential cornerstone: Joyce Banks's Books in Native Languages in the Rare Book Collections of the National Library of Canada grounds us in the onslaught of print by which Europeans sought to convert and contain Aboriginal Canadians, while James Danky and Maureen Hady's Native American Periodicals and Newspapers, 1828–1982 continues the story with many examples of Indigenous communities creating their own print resources. Paper Talk, approaching the topic through First Nations' attitudes toward and access to reading, provides a different entrance. Its "plot" is the unfolding of a struggle over the powerful medium of print, as Aboriginal communities sought its benefits without utterly yielding to the agendas of church and state. [End Page 208] The result of thorough research in government archives, supported with copious notes and references, Paper Talk is a valuable compact resource on the history of Aboriginal literacy in Canada. It begins with an introduction to prevailing indigenous pre-contact sign systems such as wampum belts, petroglyphs and pictographs, winter counts, and pictorial birchbark scrolls. Presenting Canada's First Peoples as inclined to forms of literacy before the arrival of Europeans, Edwards deals carefully with the delicate issue of the origins of the scripts known as M'ikmaq hieroglyphics (first described in the seventeenth-century by Récollet missionary Father Christian LeClercq) and Ojibwe and Cree syllabics, whose attribution to the Methodist missionary, Reverend James Evans, is under some dispute. With both languages, Edwards notes, Evans enjoyed considerable assistance from educated Native advisors. Once established in 1840, the Cree system spread quickly, due to the fact that it "drew on shorthand, as well as symbols already in use among the Cree" (51). For missionaries, Native literacy was inseparable from conversion; Edwards informs us that in the records of the Department of Indian Affairs, "the earliest report of a library in any Aboriginal community" is a Sabbath school library conducted in 1864 by the Wesleyan Methodist Society for the Saugeen Chippewas at French Bay on the Bruce peninsula (49). For the Department of Indian Affairs, Native literacy was one component of a larger program of control and improvement, in which only salutary texts were recommended. Hence recreational reading received little support, and the libraries of the Indian day schools contained few attractive titles. Some Native elders regarded Western literacy with suspicion, linking reading with idleness and loss of traditional skills. However, Edwards is more interested in tracing the stories of Native individuals and groups who sought to encourage reading and establish libraries but were thwarted by a bureaucratic and short-sighted system that, under the administration of Duncan Campbell Scott, lacked sympathy and imagination. Throughout the volume, figures emerge who are dedicated, fascinating, and often heroic. Especially valiant is Charles A. Cooke, a Mohawk clerk and translator who spent more than thirty years (from 1893 to 1926) working for the Department of Indian Affairs. His efforts render Edwards's account of the first quarter of the twentieth century brighter than the following period, although his proposal for an inclusive circulating collection of Native records, to be known as the "Indian National Library," was limited by Scott to a small disorganized body of material restricted to government employees. Cooke also produced one of the first newspapers in the Mohawk language (Onkweonwe, 1900), compiled important linguistic [End Page 209] data on Iroquois personal names, and in his last years assisted Marius Barbeau and others at the National Museum of Canada. Another lost cause documented by Edwards is the 1901 attempt of Joshua Adams, the Dominion Government Indian Lands Agent at Sarnia, to enable the members of the Aamjiwnaang community to create a free circulating library on their Reserve. However, the Department of Indian Affairs refused to envision anything beyond the books in the day school that they already administered. It was up to...

A New Healthcare Alliance: Consumer Engagement in the New Healthcare Economy

Impact of fragmented care on outcomes in the management of uncomplicated type B aortic dissection.

The Lancet Commission on cancer and health systems: harnessing synergies to achieve solutions

A Brief History of Public Health Informatics-Lessons for Leaders and a Look Into the Future.

Sharing information safely and securely: the foundation of a modern health care system.

Can Canada reckon with its health costs?

Shaping Health Policy through Nursing Research

Introduction Fragmented cancer care is defined as receiving care across multiple institutions. The National Academy of Medicine has identified cancer care fragmentation as a priority area for cost reduction. However, little is known about the role of fragmented care on receipt of guideline-recommended care patient-reported outcomes, particularly among populations affected by health inequities like Black women. The objective of this study was to characterize breast cancer care fragmentation among a population-based cohort of young Black women with breast cancer. Methods Study participants were a population-based sample of self-identified Black women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer at or below age 50, recruited since 2017 through the Florida and Tennessee state cancer registries. As part of the study, participants completed baseline questionnaires about their cancer care delivery experiences. Participants were eligible if they self-reported the locations where they received their cancer treatment (i.e., diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation). Indicator variables for care fragmentation were created to identify participants who received their diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation within the same health system and those who received their cancer care across multiple health systems. Chi-squared tests were used to assess the relationship between care fragmentation, receipt of guideline-recommended genetic testing, and self-rated health. Self-rated health was dichotomized into Excellent/Very Good/Good and Fair/Poor. Results A total of 183 Black women diagnosed breast cancer ≤ age 50 were included in the analysis. Among the included participants, 11% (n=20) only had surgery, 15% (n=27) had surgery and radiation, 17% (n=31) had surgery and chemotherapy, and 57% (n=105) had surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Among the 105 women who had surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, 17% (n=17) received all cancer treatment within the same health system of diagnosis, 21% (n=21) received all cancer treatment within the same health system but were diagnosed within a different health system, and the remaining 62% of participants received their cancer treatment across different health systems, representing care fragmentation. In chi-squared analyses, fragmented care was not associated with lower receipt of genetic testing(p=0.33) or self-rated health (p=0.28). Conclusion In this population-based study, most participants had fragmented breast cancer care, however fragmentation was not associated with lower self-rated health or receipt of guideline-recommended germline genetic testing. Current approaches for assessing care fragmentation are often too coarse to capture the complexity of breast cancer care delivery and service availability. Patient-centered conceptual models of what drives cancer care fragmentation and the specific aspects of fragmentation that have the potential to drive adverse outcomes are critical. Citation Format: Mya Roberson, Jordyn Brown, Brianna Taffe, Anne Weidner, Lindsay Venton, Sonya Reid, Tuya Pal. Characterizing Breast Cancer Care Fragmentation Among Young Black Women Diagnosed with Breast Cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2023 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(9 Suppl):Abstract nr PO3-11-02.

Legal issues pertaining to the collection of sociodemographic data in emergency departments.

US plans to boost number of medical schools