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http://umanitoba.ca/outreach/evidencenetwork/archives/17405
Canadas many impoverished neighbourhoods, such as Torontos Regent Park, Jane and Finch and Scarborough, where healthy food is often scarce, and safe, affordable housing is hard-won. Closer to the citys borders, public transit is sorely lacking. One in 2.9 Torontonians lives in a poverty postal code, according to the Toronto Community Foundation. These Canadians and others like them suffer from inadequate transit, safety, affordable housing and a lack of subsidized healthy food. For example, Regent Park didnt even have a grocery store until a few years ago. Clyde Hertzman once said that neuroscience has caught up with social epidemiology. Unfortunately, our social policies have not caught up with these powerful sources of evidence, which have shown us the bonds between environment and health. There is a fundamental disconnect between the parents most in need, who struggle each day to build the brains of their children and to keep them fed, and the policymakers who decide how many building blocks to hand over for the task. Canada invests too many resources into complex care treating people once theyre already sick and too few into the factors that keep them healthy in the first place, starting in the first years of their lives. A civil society requires a safe, supportive and affordable life for families, for optimal parenting that gives every child a chance in life. Dr. Elizabeth Lee Ford-Jones is an expert advisor with EvidenceNetwork.ca, a paediatrician specializing in social paediatrics and Project Investigator at SickKids and a professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. The above represent the opinions of Dr. Lee Ford-Jones and not necessarily the official positions of either The Hospital for Sick Children or the University of Toronto.