Building Safer Neighbourhoods

With lot of discussion going on in our seminars/lecture on Built Environment, I felt the need to discuss the topic for my final blog. Wow! I can’t believe that I am almost at the end of writing my last entry. It has indeed been an enthralling experience for me. Oh! Sorry folks for going off topic.. Moving on, I really liked the definition suggested by McCann for what constitutes a built environment. According to McCann (2003), it is the arrangement of activities or land uses within community settings, the physical connections between the places we live, work and play and ultimately the impact on our health. But why all of sudden is the concept of built environment gaining sudden momentum?? As we were discussing in our lecture, it is definitely not a new term, it has been on for the last 10 years. With increase in the rates of obesity/urban sprawl and decrease in physical activity, there has been a need to focus our attention on this topic. However there are other concerns as well, such as safety, air pollution and busy urban lifestyle as well.

Although the definition proposed by McCann is good, but ultimately it is important for us to realize that not everyone has the access to the kind of a built environment, which McCann is referring to. In our seminar class on March 23rd when we were asked to list the things which make up a built environment, there were some exciting responses. Finally we zeroed it down to parks, sidewalks, green space, hospitals, community centres, libraries, restaurants, grocery stores. But I was left wondering, whether everyone has the accessibility to all the assets which are listed here. I don’t think the answer is yes. While some neighbourhoods lack green spaces and parks, others might lack community centres, sidewalks. We all are aware of the definition of health as proposed by World Health organization (WHO). Health as stated by WHO is not merely the absence of disease but a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing. Of course now we have spiritual wellbeing also being added to the list. In seminar we were also discussing how each of these assets in our neighbourhood is responsible in promoting physical, mental, social and spiritual wellbeing. For instance, parks/sidewalks increase physical health whereas libraries can enhance mental health. Churches can definitely help increase spiritual health. I think we ought to create an environment which is conducive to everyone’s health. Even if it lacks some assets, it needs to have the most basic ones like the sidewalks, green spaces, hospitals, community centres, grocery stores etc.
However I was quite surprised when I happened to have a look at the report card for Built Environment posted in Active Healthy kids Canada website. For the usage of facilities, programs, parks and playgrounds by the public a D grade was given. The report card suggested that only 15% of parents reported frequent usage of programs and facilities. And only 34% reported frequent usage of parks and spaces. Isn’t it shocking?

U can read the full report card in the link below. It is also posted in the lecture notes for last week.

http://www.activehealthykids.ca/ReportCard/CommunityandtheBuiltEnvironment.aspx

There was an interesting discussion on the topic of built environment by Hinson & Susan. Susan feels that a successful built environment is contingent on one important element accessibility. Her point is that if it is going to take 30 minutes for someone to walk to the nearest grocery store to get their produce, then she considers that community as inaccessible. Although I agree with what Susan says, but in some cases when people don’t take advantage of assets they have say green spaces, parks. In that case, who should be blamed? Can we just keep complaining that our community lacks this, needs this instead of making full utilization of the resources we have at hand.

U can read Susan & Hinson’s blog in the link posted below.

http://pillsforlife.blogspot.com/2010/03/are-we-there-yet.html

In class,we happened to discuss about the policies and interventions for neighbourhood/urban development as suggested by Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI). It was noted that promoting safer neighbourhoods and injury prevention by increasing roadway lightning, decreasing traffic speeds and pedestrian injuries all helped enhance the rates of physical activity. This makes me think that the public’s decreased usage of parks/spaces as stated in the report card was because of their concern for safety.

Thus it is important to build safer neighbourhoods so that people are comfortable, in making use of the resources which are available, which in turn can have a positive impact on their health.

Give me a break!!

You might be wondering why this title for my blog. Seriously when I read the following headline in metro I couldn’t come up with a better title. It said “Health Canada OK’s addition of caffeine to non -cola soft drinks”. Health Canada has recently announced that it is going to approve the use of caffeine as a food additive in all carbonated soft drinks, not just cola type beverages. Beverage companies can now add synthetic caffeine to non-cola soft drinks in concentration no higher than 150 parts per million. Based on an extensive scientific review which has been conducted, Health Canada feels 150 parts per million poses no health risk, as long as consumers do not exceed the recommended maximum daily intake of caffeine.
To read the article in metro, follow the link below

http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/live/article/482392--health-canada-oks-addition-of-caffeine-to-non-cola-soft-drinks

I was curious to see people’s response in CBC news website, to know what they thought about Health Canada’s new recommendation. As one person argues, is the addition of caffeine to create a healthier product or to simply respond to urging of the industry? He suspects if adding caffeine in soft drinks, does make it a healthier option. I totally agree with that person’s viewpoints, as I feel that if there are no benefits associated with its addition, then why it should be added in the first place. Moreover what I don’t understand is why Health Canada wants to give consumers the guarantee that 150 parts per million will cause no risk. I mean I understand that they are concerned about our health. However what is the point of adding caffeine, if it has no added benefit even if there is no harm associated with its addition. On one hand, Health Canada is also saying that overconsumption of caffeine causes insomnia, irritability, dehydration, nervousness and insomnia.

Here is the link to CBC article on the same issue

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/03/19/caffeine-sodas-healthcanada.html?ref=rss

I have a feeling that the addition of caffeine in non-cola soft drinks by Health Canada, is only going to make it sound like a nice option. We are aware of the problems associated with consumption of sugary beverages among children such as obesity. With such a move from Health Canada, parents are only going to think that sugary drinks are not a bad choice for their kids. On one hand, there are efforts being taken to address the potential dangers of sugary drinks. One such health promotion campaign is the ‘Re-think your drink campaign’ which we discussed in our seminar on Feb 23rd, 2010. Their goal is to encourage learning about sugar in everyday beverages and to persuade consumers to make healthier beverage choices such as milk and water. Kulpreet in her blog on “Taxes on Pop” said how Pepsi Co has come up with a new health promotion strategy to stop selling its sugary drinks in primary/secondary schools around the world by 2012 and offer a full-range of low calorie beverages. To read Kulpreet’s interesting blog on “Taxes on pop” follow the link below

http://nutritionpool.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-on-pop.html

Kulpreet feels that it is a great way to educate children on making healthy lifestyle choices. Although I am impressed with the move taken by Pepsi Co, but I feel that Health Canada’s recent announcement on the addition of caffeine in non-cola soft drinks has only made matters worse. Although 150 parts per million (ppm) is less than the amount added to cola beverages which is 200 ppm but it is only going to give an impression that Health Canada is encouraging the consumption of these beverages.

It indeed would have been better if Health Canada regulated the addition of sugar in these non-cola beverages instead of adding caffeine. My whole point of writing this blog is not to criticize Health Canada as it may sound. Rather I only feel that we need to look at the big picture, and see if we can reduce the incidence of obesity, instead of wasting the time on making these recommendations.

Access Alliance – A Boon for Newcomers

Recently I had to write my citizenship exam to become a Canadian citizen. As I was preparing for my exam, I happened to recollect the time when I immigrated to Canada along with my family. It was a learning edge for all of us. We were naive about the many services/programs which were available for newcomers. A few weeks back in our seminar we had two guest speakers Yousra Dabbouk & Jenn Atkins from Access Alliance Multicultural health and community services. As I was listening to their presentation, I was thinking that it would have been nice if we had been aware of such services.

Access Alliance as the name suggests, their mission is to promote health/wellbeing and improve access to services for immigrants and refugees in Toronto by addressing medical, social, economic and environmental issues. What is interesting is that these services are not restricted to immigrant and refugees. Even those with no immigration status and other category of status can also take advantage of their services. Recently, I also happened to come across an interesting article in the Toronto Star which read “Free Legal hotline helps newcomers”.

http://www.thestar.com/news/ontario/article/770474--free-legal-hotline-helps-newcomers

You may be wondering what the article has to do with Access Alliance. In fact, it is one of the new hotline services introduced by Access Alliance. Isn’t it cool? Being the first multilingual legal right support hotline, the service provides legal rights information, support and referrals in Arabic, Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Tamil and Urdu apart from English and French. I definitely feel that this multilingual support hotline is a helpful resource for newcomers as I feel that they can receive services in their own language. Although as immigrants when we moved to Canada we did not have language barriers but I feel that this multilingual support hotline will benefit those who find it hard to communicate in English/French.

The article also mentions, how newcomers who lose their jobs during recession find it hard to seek income support, as they fear that it might jeopardize their ability to gain permanent residency, or sponsor their family members. This takes me back to our lecture on Social Determinants of health which we discussed in class few weeks back. These are the social and economic conditions that impact or determine one’s health status. As we all might be aware, income and social status tops the list among the eleven determinants of health. Through this legal hotline, newcomers can gain access to the legal rights which they are eligible for such as the employment insurance. Even, if they are laid from their jobs, they can get income support which in itself can have positive impact on their health.

Also as I was browsing their website, I came to know that Access Alliance uses community-based research in their approach. It is a research which is conducted for and with communities on issues which are relevant to the communities with the sole aim of bringing a positive social change. Moreover it gives greater power and control to community members through meaningful participation in the research process. One word which comes to mind when I think about community based research is the word “empowerment” which we discussed in class. There was an interesting blog on ‘Semantics of Empowerment’ by Andrea. In her blog she terms health promotion as a great example of empowerment, as she feels that through the information and resources made available people can decide whether or not to change their behaviour. I totally agree with Andrea as I feel that when members of the community are empowered to take control of their lives, it will definitely help in bringing about a favourable social change.

To read Andrea’s interesting blog on the “Semantics of Empowerment” u can follow the link below

http://foraysintofood.blogspot.com/2010/03/semantics-of-empowerment.html

Yousra & Jenn in their presentation also mentioned about some of the nutrition related programs offered by Access Alliance. One such program was the NCT (Newcomers Cooking Together) program which offers newcomers an opportunity to learn food skills and healthy eating in Canadian food environment. It was quite interesting to note that they had cooking sessions for men. Apart from that, they also have one-on-one nutrition counselling by registered dietitians at the centre on a variety of health topics.

To learn more about the services offered by Access Alliance check out the link below
http://accessalliance.ca/services

I definitely feel that Access Alliance is doing a tremendous job in helping immigrants/ refugees gain access to a wide range of services and programs. Access Alliance in my opinion, is truly a boon for newcomers.

Creating a Social Change

With four more entries due in less than a week, I was searching the web for some interesting topics for my blogs.. Then, this week in CP24 news I happened to hear about an organization named “Right to Play”. The name of the charity caught my attention in the first place. I felt that the name sounded a bit similar to my blog’s title “Eat to Live”. Frankly speaking when I read the headline in the news which said Olympian Clara Hughes promotes kids' 'Right to Play' it took me some time to realize that it was a charity based organization.

U can read the full article in the link below

http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100323/100323_hughes/20100323/?hub=CP24Sports

Anyways I was not sure whether to still continue with the Olympian effect in this blog, as I already had my previous blog on Vancouver Olympics. However, when I read the article in CP 24 news I came to know that this organization brings sports and equipment to children, in disadvantaged areas of the world. Moreover I was also impressed with the fact that Olympian Clara Hughes is involved with this organization. It was nice to see athletes supporting such organizations by lending a helping hand to underprivileged children in some parts of the world. Also I felt fortunate enough to be in a country like Canada, which promotes physical activity among children in developing countries.

From their website, I came to know that a team of top athletes from more than 40 countries are involved with this organization. As role models, these athletes inspire children and raise awareness about the Right to play internationally. Every week more than 688,000 children take part in the regular sport and play activities and a combined total of more than 1 million children attend regular programming and special sports events/festivals. And guess what? The best part is they create social change in communities which are affected by poverty and disease. Focusing on the notion of health promotion, Right to Play’s sport and play programs educate and mobilize communities around national health and disease prevention priorities including HIV, AIDS, malaria and immunization. Their ultimate programming goal is to encourage behaviour change among children. In my opinion, I definitely feel that Right to Play is doing a good job by including both Olympic athletes and other elite sports figure as their Athlete Ambassadors in their mission. This takes me back to the one of the theories related to health behaviour which I learnt in one of my classes. According to the Social Cognitive Theory proposed by Bandura, children learn human behaviour by observing and imitating others. It is nice to see how these athletes are influencing kids to engage in physical activity and in turn responsible for a change in their behaviour. To learn more about the organization, you can follow the link below

http://www.righttoplay.com/canada/about-us/Pages/AtAGlance.aspx

I happened to read a similar blog titled Local Olympian inspires Kids. In her blog, Kristie mentions how promoting health among children at a young age will allow them to adopt a healthy lifestyle and will reduce their chances of developing diseases later in life. I fully agree with Kristie as I feel that children need to be targeted at the early stages of their life as it will help create a long lasting impact on their health.

To read Kristie’s blog follow this link http://sweetheavens2010.blogspot.com/2010/03/local-olympian-inspires-kids.html

In our lecture class on Wednesday, we got an opportunity to see a short fifteen minute lecture by Malcolm Gladwell, journalist and the author of the famous book “The Tipping Point”. In his speech, he talked about social change and how it can best be achieved. According to Gladwell, we tend to favour awareness a lot. By this he means that we have done more about knowing the issue than addressing it. He feels that there is an enormous gap between knowing and doing. Gladwell feels that to achieve social change one ought to have a plan of action and the awareness side of things then needs to follow. In my opinion, “Right to Play” is successful in best achieving this social change. Rather than focusing on the awareness side of the issue, they focus on the taking the necessary action to culminate the problem at the grassroots level.

[I tried posting the link to Gladwell’s speech, for some reason I am unable to do so. However it is posted in the Bb in the course materials section for this week.]


As I was listening to Gladwell’s speech it appeared to be that the model he proposed for social change was not as easy to achieve as it sounded. But after coming across the organization “Right to Play” I honestly feel that there is nothing impossible in this world. I feel that “Right to Play” is a best example for how one must approach social change.

Vancouver Olympics- An Eye-opener

Wow! What a historic win by Canadians at the ice-hockey game against the US... Indeed a perfect way to end our Winter Olympics. Sidney Crosby has truly emerged as a hero in the eyes of millions of viewers who witnessed the game. With all the buzz and excitement The Vancouver Olympics has created I thought that maybe I should write one of my blogs on this topic. Then an article on CTV news website caught my attention.. The title of article was truly inspiring. “Will Olympics inspire us to get up off the couch.”?

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100226/olympic_effect_100228/20100228?hub=Health


According to Dr Grant Lum, the Toronto based sports-physician feels that watching the Olympic Games has motivated patients coming to his clinic to push a little harder in their workouts. Maureen Hagan vice-president of the Good Life Fitness Clubs also feels that those who are coming to the clubs are so inspired by the Olympics to get off the couch. In fact, she has been hearing people say in her classes’ things like “Let’s dedicate this class to skating and work our legs harder”



What is interesting is that even Canadian kids are seeing these exceptional athletes who are winning medals at these events as their role models. Overall it has had such a huge impact on everyone. Starting from kids to seniors everyone wants to become physically active in the true spirit of Olympics. Dr Lum feels that Olympic athletes fascinate average Canadians possibly because they’ re so different from professional athletes who can often seem two- dimensional. He further states that although these people have everyday lives yet they perform at such an incredible level which inspires us to do things with our bodies that we might have never imagined.


Last yr in one of my courses we discussed some key theories related to health behaviour. As, I happened to read this article it reminded me of the Social impact Theory proposed by Bandura. According to Bandura, we learn human behaviour by observing and following others e.g., at home, daily routines or even the media. In my opinion, I definitely feel that these games have created a positive impact on us to incorporate physical activity into our daily routine. Watching our favourite players perform at these games we just feel that we could also be like them. On the flip side, Maureen says that she has been noticing an Olympic effect at her gyms. By this she means only few members are coming to her gyms as they are catching all the excitement of these games at home. Yes, I do agree with Maureen that Vancouver Olympics have definitely made us a couch potato. Not only this, we also tend to munch on unhealthy foods like fries, booze, pizzas, as we watch these games on our television sets. In fact, one of the blogs by Kulpreet on Super Bowl Sundays seems to illustrate this reality. Like Super Bowl Sundays as Kulpreet said, Winter Olympics have also unknowingly contributed to weight gain and risk factors associated with it such as diabetes, heart attack. To read Kulpreet’s blog on Super Bowl Sundays follow the link

http://nutritionpool.blogspot.com/2010/02/super-bowl-sunday.html


In my opinion, I believe that every issue has both potential benefits and harms associated with it. Yes I do remember, the dispute which took place in Vancouver by protestors who felt that it would have been better to spend these $$ on major social issues such as poverty, homelessness. There is an interesting blog on this issue by Chung. U can read her blog in the following link.

http://starlightmoonbrightfoodfight.blogspot.com/2010/02/oh-canada.html


Ultimately I think it is important for us to realize that Winter Olympics is creating a hope for a positive change in the right direction. If these games are going to inspire people to adopt physical activity into their lifestyle then I think it is worth it. In my eyes, Vancouver Olympics has truly emerged as an eye-opener.