My Perspective - Blank canvas

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Published on Thursday, July 14, 2016

By Kate Jackman-Atkinson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

Health is one of the most important issues facing any person. Our jobs, our relationships and how we are able to live our lives are all dictated by our health– anyone who has known someone with ailing health knows this to be true. 

This is why our health care system is so important, and why we spend so much on it. In Manitoba, it’s the largest single provincial government expenditure. In the 2016 budget, health spending accounted for over $6 million of the total planned expenditures of just over $16 billion. If you add together the next two largest areas of expenditure, Education and Families, they don’t even total the amount spent on Health.

So just how are we doing in this important and expensive area?

No health care system can be perfect and we are constrained by the realities of limited resources– financial, physical and human. We face shortages of physicians and nurses, we face wait times for surgical suites and access to advanced diagnostics and we face the grim reality that at a certain point, performing procedures aren’t economically viable for a publicly funded health care system.

Understanding the constraints, we still want to know how we’re doing and how we compare to Canadians in other jurisdictions. Being able to compare information from across Canada gives us a chance to look at other Canadians, with a similar health care system, and see where we are lacking or where we are excelling.

Statistics Canada gathers health information from across the country to facilitate such analysis. The data tells an interesting story. The 10 and 3, a website that uses statistics to tell stories about Canada and Canadians, published an article last year looking at the healthiest and least healthy areas in Canada.  The authors used data from provincial health authorities, which offered the most localized information available.

They used StatsCan’s 2013 Health Profile and looked at the rate of asthma, diabetes and cancer; access to medical doctors; daily smoking rate; rate of overweight residents; and perceived mental health to paint a picture of the residents’ health. These figures were compiled to create a composite health ranking. 

The data showed a distinct urban-rural divide, bad news for Manitoba’s mostly rural population. The 10 unhealthiest regions in Canada were rural, while the 10 healthiest were in urban or metro areas.

But the data doesn’t tell the whole story.  Mostly because it can’t– there isn’t health information for all of the regional authorities. For example, for the Assiniboine Regional Health Authority (the data precedes amalgamation), there is no data about many health factors, including smoking rates or obesity. Across the prairies, there isn’t the statistical data needed to paint an accurate picture of Canadians’ health.

A lack of quality data can only lead to difficulties in making good decisions about the health needs of area residents. Between an aging population and rising levels of obesity and diabetes, it’s never been more important to have an accurate picture of Manitobans’ health. Unfortunately, in many cases, all we can see is a blank canvas.