Healthy Living – we can all make a difference

Glenda is an educated, employed, single mother. Even though she is resilient and resourceful, she has encountered systemic barriers in life that have compromised her ability to lead a healthy lifestyle. The negative impact that these obstacles have had on her and her daughter was actually avoidable and was due mostly to our inaction, not theirs.

It feeds into the age old question – what keeps us healthy? Eating a nutritious diet? Being physically active? Not smoking? The so called lifestyle choices? While it’s true that for many people these behaviours are choices, for others it’s not so clear cut. We need to look at the broader context in which people are living in order to understand why they live the way they do and the effect that is having on their health.

The Population Health Team has just released a video Healthy Living: Public Policy Makes a Difference which explores that broader context and the long-standing connection between the social determinants of health (e.g., housing, early childhood development, and social cohesion) and the health outcomes that manifest among the people who live in our communities. The video is part of the work that Population Health does with local governments to advocate for healthy public policy.

The video focuses on the stories of Glenda and Jenny, two smart, strong women who are encountering obstacles that are getting in the way of healthy lifestyles. Glenda and Jenny share their experiences and highlight some of the local public policies that have made a positive difference in their lives.

While the video is targeted at local governments, we all have a role to play in making sure that we aren’t the source of barriers to good health for our clients and that we are helping to remove them whenever possible.

The video can be found here.

After you have watched the video with your colleagues and partners, there is a discussion guide and policy prompter briefs to stimulate discussion and ideas and to encourage policy action. They can be found here.