Abstracts
Canadians' Vulnerability to the Foodborne & Waterborne Diseases
Dominique Charron1, Corinne Schuster-Wallace and David Noble
1Public Health Agency of Canada
Dominique_Charron@phac-aspc.gc.ca
Foodborne and waterborne illnesses are perhaps the most important global health problem. In Canada, as in other wealthy industrialized nations, good sanitation and refrigeration, public health and food safety programs, and the effect of treatment or drinking water provide important defences against foodborne and waterborne diseases. Nonetheless, many outbreaks still occur, some affecting hundreds of people.
Climate change may increase the vulnerability of Canadians to foodborne and waterborne illnesses. To date, research in this area has been dominated by traditional epidemiologic approaches that have focused on disease agents and environments. However, early experiences with climate change health impact assessments have demonstrated that to improve our understanding of health impacts from climate and climate change, a social-ecological system perspective is required, rather than the traditional epidemiologic focus on proximate, individual-level risk factors.
The Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention & Control is currently investigating various population health attributes in order to be able to characterize Canadians' vulnerability to foodborne and waterborne illnesses under climate change based on a set of ecosystem-, population-, community- and individual-based determinants of health.
This presentation will report preliminary results and describe methodological issues and challenges.
2005-04-05 |
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