Overview of "Protecting Our Collective Future: Renewing Canada’s Role in Global Health"
As we near the second quarter of the twenty-first century, the global health terrain is shifting in important ways. The COVID-19 pandemic, accelerating climate crisis, rising geopolitical instability, displacement of populations, alarming wealth and income inequalities, and greater economic instability, among other major concerns, are coinciding to create what is being described as a “polycrisis.” Together, these crises demonstrate the clear connections between global and domestic health and well-being, and the even greater importance of effective cooperation across countries.
It is in this context that an Expert Panel was jointly convened by the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (CAHS) to provide strategic insights and advice on Canada’s role in global health over the next two decades. We approached this task not as an exhaustive search of the literature, as one would for a systematic review of evidence on the effectiveness of a clearly defined intervention, nor as a research study informed by immutable facts or truths. While we drew upon existing literature and evidence, we were also informed by a myriad of external consultations and the collective and diverse expertise, experience and explicitly stated values of Panel members. These were brought together as a strategic opportunity to reflect upon Canada’s past, present and future role in global health. The findings from this undertaking led to our recommendations, which we were ultimately tasked to provide, to renew Canada’s global health role amid a rapidly changing world facing interconnected challenges.
Our starting point was that Canada is a vital part of this changing world and must thus continue to actively engage in global health cooperation to advance health and well-being both at home and abroad. For the purposes of this report, the Panel defines global health as an interdisciplinary field of study, policy and practice that encompasses the health and well-being of human and other forms of life on a planetary scale. Advancing global health, in turn, depends on three perspectives: a) the need for intergenerational protection and promotion of all life and of the earth’s ecosystems that sustain life (planetary); b) the need to address unfair, avoidable or remediable differences between groups of people, whether those groups are defined socially, economically, demographically, geographically or by other dimensions of inequality (equity); and c) the need to move from siloed to holistic thinking and practice (integration). Most importantly, our definition of global health emphasises the close connection between the global and domestic spheres.
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Expert Panel on Canada’s Role in Global Health >
Project Lead
- William Ghali, FRSC
Expert Panel
- Tim Evans (Co-Chair)
- Kelley Lee, FRSC (Co-Chair)
- Chantal Blouin
- Nadine Caron
- Jocalyn Clark
- Robert Greenhill
- Joanne Liu
- Francis Omaswa
- Jane Philpott
- K. Srinath Reddy
Secretariat
- Prativa Baral
- Gatien de Broucker
- Daniel Eisenkraft Klein
- Leah Shipton
Peer Reviewers
- Robert Armstrong
- Margo Greenwood, FRSC
- Lynn McIntyre
- Peter Singer, FRSC
For further information or media requests, contact Paige Beveridge, Communications Manager, at (613) 991-6990 / pbeveridge@rsc-src.ca.
