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How healthy are people in Canada? An indicators dashboard

People in Canada generally live long and healthy lives, but not everyone has the same opportunity for good health. This dashboard explores the health of our population using more than 50 interactive indicators.

Dr. Theresa Tam

A message from Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer

The Public Health Agency of Canada has released an update to the Health of People in Canada dashboard, initially launched in March 2023. This collection of public health indicators helps us understand areas where we are doing well and where we need to improve. Ultimately, the dashboard provides a snapshot of the health of our population, while illustrating the wide range of health, socio-economic, and environmental factors that interact to keep us healthy and well.

The dashboard illustrates that we entered the pandemic from a place of strength. People in Canada generally live long lives. Over the past decade, the incidence of some chronic conditions, like certain cancers, diabetes, and heart disease, has been decreasing, mainly because of improvements in prevention, screening, and treatment. Nonetheless, because of Canada’s aging population, the health system will have to meet the needs of an increasing number of people living with these conditions. Some social factors that underlie good health in Canada have also been improving over the longer term. More people are achieving post-secondary education, and over the past decade overall poverty rates, including childhood poverty, have decreased.

Despite pandemic health services interruptions and the prevalence of mis- and disinformation, people in Canada continued to take steps to protect their health and the health of their families. For example, in 2021, coverage of routine childhood vaccinations for vaccine-preventable diseases, like polio and measles, was similar to pre-pandemic levels. Most parents and guardians agree that vaccines are safe, effective, and help protect their child’s health. However, there is still more progress needed to reach national vaccination targets.

There are also some worrying health trends, many of which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Life expectancy in Canada has generally been increasing for the past 4 decades. However, for the second year in a row, life expectancy in Canada declined in 2021, although to a lesser extent than the previous year. This decline disproportionately impacted men and was likely driven by deaths related to COVID-19 and the toxic drug crisis. Troublingly, opioid-related deaths increased significantly at the start of the pandemic and continue to devastate families and communities across Canada. Although most people in Canada report positive mental health, this measure has been decreasing since 2015 and further worsened in 2021.

We are also seeing an ongoing rise in some infectious diseases, such as both infectious and congenital syphilis, with disproportionate impacts for certain populations. Although national tuberculosis rates have remained unchanged over the last decade, some communities still experience much higher transmission as a result of social and economic inequities. This highlights the need to accelerate efforts to eliminate this treatable and curable disease.

I remain concerned about persistent health inequities and the unfair barriers to good health experienced by some populations. For example, lower income neighbourhoods or neighbourhoods with higher ethnic and cultural diversity had significantly higher COVID-19 mortality rates. We need to continue to work together to reduce health inequities so all people living in Canada can enjoy optimal health and well-being.

The pandemic highlighted the importance of health data for effective decision-making during a public health emergency. It also exposed long-standing gaps in the way we collect and share these data. The lack of socio-demographic information in the dashboard, such as Indigeneity, race, ethnicity, or diverse sex and gender data, reflects the ongoing challenge of collecting and combining local level data through a trusted, coordinated system. We must urgently address these gaps in a secure and ethical way, including honouring principles of data governance for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples.

Canada is facing increasingly frequent and severe emergencies, including those related to extreme weather events. Our public health systems and communities must be better equipped to deal with the related health impacts in an agile and timely way. My hope is that this dashboard continues to be a stepping stone on our way to a modernized health data ecosystem that can help us prepare for, and respond to, the diverse needs of communities across Canada.

Dr. Theresa Tam, October 2023

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer

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