Mind The Disruption

What can we do to promote culturally safe places and spaces across the health system? Listen to this episode to learn about how Dr. Terri Aldred, the Academic Lead for the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, disrupts dominant narratives about Indigeneity. Terri shares stories from her journey to become an Indigenous physician, outlines concrete actions practitioners can take to foster cultural safety, and encourages us all to work together for a brighter future.

What makes a public green space healthy for everyone? Listen to this episode to hear how Dr. Nadha Hassen is disrupting the status quo through intersectional and anti-racist approaches in research and community collaborations. Nadha speaks with host Pemma Muzumdar, sharing unique insights on why public green spaces are a critical part of public health infrastructure.

In response to rising tensions and unmet needs in its downtown core, the City of Edmonton’s RECOVER Urban Wellbeing team and partners questioned assumptions and embarked on a journey of deep listening and co-creation of solutions with residents to cultivate connectedness and well-being. Check out this episode, featuring former RECOVER project manager Sue Holdsworth, to discover how RECOVER’s well-being framework can be used to transform how we design, deliver and evaluate programs and services to foster essential, but often overlooked, non-material aspects of health and well-being.

Engage Nova Scotia is working to better measure, understand and improve well-being for all Nova Scotians through a large Quality of Life survey, accessible data tools and deep community engagement. Over two episodes, you will meet multiple members of the vibrant Engage Nova Scotia team: Chief Engagement Officer Danny Graham, Outreach and Participation Lead Tammy Ewing, Community Outreach Lead for Equity Deserving Communities kamilah apong, and public health leader and Chair of Engage Nova Scotia’s Board of Directors Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed. Check out this episode (Part 1 of 2) to discover why it is important to think differently about how we understand what makes communities and societies successful, equitable, healthy and well.

Check out this episode to learn from Chloé Cébron and Shezeen Suleman who are part of a growing movement mobilizing for the right to health care for all people living in Canada, regardless of immigration status. In this episode, Chloé, the director of policy and advocacy at Médecins du Monde, shares lessons from a successful advocacy campaign to expand health care coverage for all children living in Quebec. Then Shezeen, a midwife and co-chair of the Health Network for Uninsured Clients in Toronto, reflects on using advocacy as a strategy for health equity.

As the National Director of Disability Without Poverty, Rabia Khedr is building a vibrant intersectional movement led by people with disabilities to end disability poverty through a new federal Canada Disability Benefit. Listen to this episode to learn from Rabia about why this benefit is so necessary and what is still needed to deliver meaningful change. Jonathan Heller, a visiting scholar at the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health, then shares practical strategies that public health can use to build community power and support movements like Disability Without Poverty.

As founder and Executive Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health (ENRICH) Project, Dr. Ingrid Waldron works alongside African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaw communities to disrupt environmental racism as a necessary part of the environmental justice movement. In this episode, Ingrid positions environmental racism as an urgent health equity issue and highlights how the ENRICH project builds community power through meaningful partnerships, research and collective action. Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, a former Medical Officer of Health, then reflects on how public health can better respond to communities whose health is affected by systemic racism.

Registered dietitian Lillian Yin joins us to talk about why weight discrimination is so harmful. She shares her vision for a nourishing future of public health and nutrition, as well as practical ways to challenge weight bias and discrimination in our daily lives and areas of work. This standalone bonus episode features more from Lillian Yin who works at Vancouver Coastal Health and who was a reflective guest on Episode 5 Disrupting Food Insecurity & Fat Phobia.

Season 1 of Mind the Disruption was a success! We’ve decided to release bonus content from three episodes. This standalone episode features more from Medical Officer of Health Dr. Monika Dutt who was a reflective guest on Episode 1 Disrupting Gig Work. Listen to this bonus episode to learn about how public health can collaborate with worker-led organizers to advance decent work to promote and protect the health of workers in precarious and unsafe work conditions.

Paul Taylor, the former head of FoodShare and a life-long anti-poverty activist, dismantles the barriers – include fat phobia and weight bias – that constrain people’s access to food on their own terms. Listen to this episode to hear Paul’s story, learn about FoodShare’s commitment to food justice, body liberation and fat acceptance, and reflect on how public health practitioners can confront harmful weight discrimination with dietitian Lillian Yin.

Samiya Abdi has trained thousands of public health practitioners to recognize the power that each of us has to do something different in the face of health inequities and injustice. Listen to this episode to learn from both Samiya and Heather Lokko – two seasoned public health professionals working at the provincial and local levels – about how to transform public health practice, teams, organizations, and systems from within to support more equitable communities and societies.

Jennifer Scott delivers food on her bike in Toronto and organizes with other gig workers to fight against the challenging – and often unsafe and harmful – employer practice of misclassifying workers. Listen to this episode to hear Jennifer’s story and reflect on why healthy working conditions are essential for public health with Medical Officer of Health Dr. Monika Dutt.