If the past year has taught us anything, it's that we can no longer ignore inequality.

The basic income conversation has freed imaginations around the world, and Canadian hopes for closing our gaps in wealth and health. But it's worth asking the question: are we better off when we have more income, or need less of it?

Income is the determinant of the other determinants of health.

Who are the real producers of good health, and how can we craft policy that supports them, in order to promote greater communal and societal well-being?

In this sixth episode of Upstream Radio we speak with Dr. Evelyn Forget, Armine Yalnizyan and Dr. Danielle Martin about the costs and benefits of a Canadian basic income policy, including opportunity costs, focusing in on what it could all mean for our health.

Where you live plays an important role in determining your health. Six-digit postal codes are often used in health research to identify where people live and to work out environmental exposure measures, which are then linked to health data.

Canada lacks a system to track co-existing mental health conditions or co-ingestions in opioid-related fatalities, and our evidence base on opioid overdoses is disappointingly sparse.  As we seek to build upon it, we will need to do so with a view to the significant role that mental health and substance abuse can play in worsening opioid misuse. 

In nursing school I learned about the social determinants of health. I read countless pages, wrote lengthy papers and sat in many lectures all dedicated to the topic.  But despite this 'knowledge' I gained at university, the reality of how our health has social sources didn’t really hit me until I ventured out into the real world.

Developed jointly by the Saskatoon Health Region and Upstream, this report applies a health equity lens to the City of Saskatoon’s Growth Plan to Half a Million. Find the report here.

Globalization has played an immense role in the way that we cultivate and produce our food. The globalization of food allows us to experience different cuisines from all around the world.

It’s a luxury that is neither sustainable nor practical, and influences not only the way we prepare and consume food, but how we value and understand food. These four films by Andrea Cessna are aimed to critically reflect global food on a local level.