H1N1 and the “crisis in the clinics”: Apathy, risk, and the problem of communication

Yesterday I spent the better part of an hour with Joanne Laucius, a reporter at the Ottawa Citizen. Ms. Laucius phoned to interview me about the public health authorities’ messaging surrounding the H1N1 issue, particularly as it relates to vaccination and the “crisis in the clinics”. The conversation began with her providing a 3-5 minute [...]

Global Warming, Public Health and the Discourse of Responsibility

In 2008 Health Canada commissioned the polling company Environics Research Group to survey Canadians about their attitudes and understanding of global warming and its likely impact on public health. Titled Assessing Perceived Health Risks of Climate Change: Canadian Public Opinion – 2008, the report is available in the electronic collection of Library and Archives Canada.
Most [...]

Back to the blog

After several months away it’s time to get back to blogging – it’s not that I’ve been lazy or disengaged, just distracted by other things. Here’s a summary of what I’ve been up to since (gulp) my last post in February.
In late May, I was the conference program co-chair of the Association for Nonprofit and [...]

When Risk, Fear and Corporate Power Collide

An interesting blog by Wired magazine reporter Brandon Keim suggests that the recent decision of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to put the American people on “alert” for an anthrax attack has more to do with protecting the Bush administration’s cozy relationship with manufacturers of anthrax vaccines than protecting the nation from a bio-terrorist attack. Project BioShield [...]

Thank You for Smoking

In what must be a sign that public health advocates are making big gains in the legal and PR battles against Big Tobacco, news today that the biggest cancer purveyor in the U.S., Philip Morris, has taken the City of San Francisco to court over a new bylaw banning sales of cigarettes in pharmacies.

The company [...]