Wendy Glauser is a health and science writer, and a parent of two, in Toronto. For almost two months now, the primary public health message across Canada, and especially in Ontario, has been “stay home.” In cities, exercise outside is allowed, ideally in quiet areas at off-peak times, but not exactly encouraged. Guidance around outdoor exercise has principally been for adults. As the provincial chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, put it, the rules shouldn’t stop “anyone from go

Three weeks ago, Maria Isabel Gilbert felt so exhausted she needed to lie down on the couch. Over the next few hours, she developed a fever. The next few days brought a headache, dry throat, diarrhea, and chills. “I thought, ‘Oh boy, this is it,’” says Gilbert. This, of course, being COVID-19.

These are anxious days for most people, but especially for the health workers who are preparing for worse still to come as cases of COVID-19 multiply across Canada. Some health care workers are balancing long hours at work with coordinating childcare and supports for elderly parents. Other have chosen to isolate themselves to keep loved ones safe if they get sick, given dwindling supplies protective equipment.

The good news is that coronavirus doesn’t seem to be worse for pregnant women than for other adults, but there are some extra precautions that pregnant women should keep in mind.

Indigenous communities across Canada are adapting a new way of measuring child and youth wellbeing with a tool co-designed by Indigenous youth. Those behind the tool say Indigenous-developed health measures are desperately lacking, although vitally important as communities continue to contend with the mental health fallout of colonization.

The coronavirus, or COVID-19, continues to spread, and has now infected more than 80,000 people worldwide. While most of those cases are in China, outbreaks have surfaced in South Korea, Italy and Iran. The World Health Organization has said to be prepared for a pandemic, and the Centers for Disease Control in the United States warned on Feb 25 that the outbreak could cause a “severe disruption” to the lives of ordinary Americans. In Canada, chief medical officer of health Teresa Tam said on Feb

At-home testing and monitoring of possible COVID-19 cases could ease pressure on hospitals and emergency services and prevent the spread of infection, say experts. Public health officials, hospital leaders and paramedics in the Champlain Local Health Integration Network in Ontario are working on a protocol to do just that. Under the proposed protocol, people suspected to have COVID-19 would be assessed, swabbed and monitored at home by specially trained paramedics in protective equipment.

Ross Upshur decided to focus his research on the ethics of pandemic response when he was working in public health during the SARS outbreak of 2003. Currently the head of the division of clinical public health at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and associate director of the Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health, Dr. Upshur has published numerous papers on pandemic ethics. He’s also consulted with the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Border

In case parents needed to hear another thing we’ve been getting wrong all along, researchers from Stanford University published a study recently that suggests we might need to rethink what we’ve been told are normal and fever temperatures. The study analyzed databases from the mid 1800s to 2017, and found that humans’ normal body temperatures are now running almost 0.5 degrees Celsius cooler, compared to the 1800s. This means that normal human body temperature isn’t the 37C or 98.6F that most o

Scientists warn that the unexamined use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care could result in worse health outcomes for marginalized people. Recently, a panel of experts gathered at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto to discuss the risks that AI poses to health equity. Dr. Ruha Benjamin, an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, explained that computer algorithms often produce bias because “human decisions comprise the data and shape the design...

In climate change research, adaptation used to be a dirty word. Twenty years ago, when the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative (PARC) was formed at the University of Regina, environmental research groups refused the centre’s research funds, recounts David Sauchyn, senior research scientist at PARC. “At the time, people argued we can still prevent climate change and everyone who advocates adaptation is giving up,” he says. In his 1992 book on climate change, former U.S. vice-president Al Go

Emergency doctors in the Greater Toronto Area say cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) is going underdiagnosed and there isn’t enough public awareness of the condition. Dr. Lloyd Gordon, an emergency physician at Humber River Hospital, says he often sees one patient a shift with the condition. “You look at their history and they’ve had ultrasounds, CAT scans, and nowhere does it say that the patient was advised to stop smoking marijuana,” he says.

Ilana Shapiro* describes breastfeeding her first baby as a nightmare. Not only did her nipples hurt while nursing, but the pain lasted for two hours afterward, due to vasospasms—when the blood vessels in the nipple tighten and spasm. “The pain was so bad that I couldn’t sleep. Then, just as the pain started to go away, she wanted to be fed again,” says the mother of two, who lives in Toronto. Six weeks postpartum, Shapiro found herself, at the advice of friends, at the Jack Newman breastfeeding

When Dr. Ayesha Khan had a miscarriage after years of struggling with infertility, she didn’t mention it to colleagues or miss a beat at work. Khan, a clinical assistant professor in emergency medicine at Stanford University, now thinks that type of silence could be preventing pregnant doctors from understanding the potential risks of night shifts and long hours in early pregnancy and from seeking accommodations they may need. At the recent FemInEM Idea Exchange conference in New York City, Kh

Doctors in Ontario are concerned about the growth of virtual care walk-in clinics and are calling on the province’s government to support family doctors in offering virtual care for rostered patients.

In recent years, women have shared stories of their infertility, miscarriages, postpartum depression and birth trauma. But there is one area of reproductive health that moms are still reluctant to open up about, and that’s abortion. It may surprise you to learn that many of the women who have abortions in Canada—perhaps the majority—are moms. According to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, about 39 percent of the women who had abortions at Canadian hospitals reported at le

FOR more than 10 years, Jennifer Gunter has been fact-checking claims about women’s bodies and writing about it all – sometimes humorously, at other times using expletives. She has been called Twitter’s resident gynaecologist and her Twitter fans (she has over 200,000 followers) describe those she has admonished for their ignorance as having been “guntered”. Now, she is poised to reach out to many more when her book …

Boosting the number of Indigenous medical students, bolstering Indigenous curriculum among measures promised. The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada has approved a Joint Commitment to Action on Indigenous Health that Indigenous health leaders say provides a much-needed roadmap for training medical students to better serve Indigenous communities. In May, leaders representing Canada’s 17 faculties of medicine committed to building stronger relationships with Indigenous communities, i

New resources are emerging to help physicians across Canada reduce opioid doses for patients. They come at a time when doctors feel pressure from regulatory agencies to deprescribe opioids but don’t feel trained or supported in the process. “We spend a lot of time in medical schools teaching doctors how to start medications — not just opioids —and we don’t really talk about stopping any of them,” said Dr. Lori Montgomery, medical lead of the Calgary Pain Program for Alberta Health Services.

Primary care providers who treat patients with chronic pain appear to be exhibiting signs of burnout, in large part because they often feel unable to help patients overcome their complex challenges. This was a conclusion of the authors of a recent paper in PLoS ONE based on interviews with 19 doctors and 8 nurses in primary care, supplemented with 40 hours of observations. “Their narratives suggested experiences of depersonalization, loss of job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in relation