The role of the health sector in addressing poverty

To explore Canadian health sector initiatives addressing poverty.

Information about 224 health sector initiatives addressing poverty was collected from Health Canada, provincial/territorial health ministries, and health regions.

Health Canada, 12 provincial/territorial health ministries, and at least one third of health regions have been undertaking poverty-related initiatives. Almost two thirds (64.7%) of initiatives focused on the consequences of poverty. Much less frequent were initiatives that aim to: raise awareness about poverty; prevent people from becoming poor; enhance skills and education of people in poverty; and alter social and economic conditions contributing to poverty.

While strategies that focus on the consequences of poverty likely enhance the health of Canadians in poverty, these strategies do little to reduce poverty rates. Efforts to improve the health of both individual Canadians in poverty and society as a whole will be limited until the health sector uses more strategies that challenge fundamental structural conditions contributing to poverty.