Darrell Tan, MAP scientist and clinician in the division of infectious diseases at St. Michael’s Hospital, spoke to the Toronto Star the rise in mpox cases Toronto in recent weeks and data showing an increase in mpox cases among people who have not had any doses of the vaccine.
Author: Samira Prasad
Homeless Torontonians are dying younger than the general population — and it’s getting worse
Lucie Richard spoke with the Toronto Star about her new study which warns that the gap between life expectancies for housed versus homeless Torontonians has only been growing, and is especially pronounced for younger generations.
‘Not chump change:’ Home prices in Canada strain affluent budgets
Dr. Jim Dunn spoke with The New York Times, sharing insight on what steps the government can take towards providing affordable housing. Dr. Dunn explained that eliminating certain tax exemptions for homeowners would result in tax revune that could be used to build public housing, an initiative largely abandoned decades ago.
Think you have a ‘summer cold’? There’s a good chance it’s COVID-19, doctors say
Dr. Andrew Pinto spoke with The Canadian Press about the summer surge of COVID-19 cases. ”What we’ve seen in Canada is that there has likely been a period of time since people were last infected, so that immunity has waned and also a lot of people didn’t get their COVID vaccines this past fall and winter,” he shared.
As Canadian drug deaths rise, programs to keep users safe face backlash
Drs. Tara Gomes and Ahmed Bayoumi shared comments about the importance of harm reduction programs with Reuters in this article covering the backlash and criticisms that these efforts have been facing. “We have a potential to really lose ground on a lot of initiatives that have been started that could really address the opioid overdose crisis in meaningful ways,” said Dr. Bayoumi.
The real reasons doctors are giving up on family medicine and how to fix it
Dr. Archna Gupta was recently quoted in this Streets of Toronto article covering the need for more family physicians in Ontario. She spoke about the alarming number of patients who have to travel hours to visit their doctor. “It’s too far and it’s impacting how Ontarians receive care because they are not seeing their family doctor — or any family doctor — as often as patients who live closer,”
Fentanyl testing shows contamination
Karen McDonald was recently interviewed on CTV Your Morning. She spoke about the unpredictability of the unregulated drug supply, and how drug checking has continued to provide life saving data through the crisis.
What a rising summer wave says about Canada’s long-term future with COVID
Dr. Andrew Pinto recently spoke with The Toronto Star about the recent spike of COVID-19 cases in Canada.“This virus continues to persist and be part of our environment,” he says, “It’s shown that it can continue to surprise us.”
They’re the gold standard of care for severe mental illness. So why doesn’t Ontario fund more of them?
Dr. Samuel Law spoke with TVO for a story about Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams, which are considered the gold standard for mental health care. Law talked about how the pandemic impacted the ACT teams he works on, how allied professionals and clients’ families and friends helped to close care gaps during the pandemic, and how a study from St. Michael’s showed that despite efforts, people with mental health issues had significant struggles during lockdowns.
Mandating hospitals to record homelessness among patients improves health outcomes, new study finds
Lucie Richard and Dr. Stephen Hwang spoke with The Globe and Mail about their recently published study that shows the mandating of coding for homelessness in hospitals helped identify about one in two homeless patients, more than double the number before the policy update.