Of course one of my big issues, as you may have noticed, is that my energy and attention is all over the place when it comes to issues that concern me. It has always seemed like a certain degree of focus would be useful, but I never quite found it.

Well, after seeing and hearing a few different pieces on the subject, I thought I would try to focus on the social determinants of health and whether what is known in this area is incorporated into decision making and, if not, why not. And if we took an approach that acknowledged this effect what could be achieved.

I think the other thing that attracts me to this issue generally is that the way the discourse is shaped is reflective of what happens in so many other policy areas. The questions we ask, and the assumptions we start with, determine the answers we get and limit the policy options considered. I firmly believe many if not most of our currently pressing problems could be solved (or substantially addressed) if we gave realistic consideration to ALL policy options. I’m sure this is not a new thought, but it obviously not widely held or understood, so one more person making the point can’t hurt.

To start things off, here is an excerpt I transcribed from CBC Radio’s Ideas, “Sick People or Sick Societies, Part 2.” In it, York University Professor Denis Rayfield sheds new light on a one sided discussion I know I’ve heard over the water cooler:

“The epidemiologists get themselves in knots about the ‘French Paradox’ – they eat fat saturated food, they drink and they smoke and they have no cardiovascular disease. So they go on, ‘is it the white wine, the red wine,’ and some fellow wrote an article that basically said ‘White wine? Red wine? How about job security? How about early childhood education? How about a sense of solidarity in the culture?’”

So what would happen if we really looked at the whole picture?