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Casebook Title Page & Front Matter

Western Public Health Casebooks

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Table Of Contents

Western Public Health Casebooks

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Preface, Amardeep Thind

Western Public Health Casebooks

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Acknowledgements, Shannon Sibbald, Gerald Mckinley

Western Public Health Casebooks

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Introduction: Contributing To The Development Of The Next Generation, Michel P. Deilgat

Western Public Health Casebooks

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Case 1 : Vanishing Volunteers: The Use Of Implementation Research To Improve Support For Community Drug Distributors In Cote D'Ivoire, Daniel Dilliott, Alison Krentel, Mark Speechley

Western Public Health Casebooks

To be implemented successfully, most large-scale public health interventions, such as mass drug administration (MDA) campaigns for the elimination of lymphatic filariasis, require a large extent of human health resources. For several reasons, health workers and volunteer community drug distributors (CDDs) sometimes feel overwhelmed and unsupported in their work, which can cause them to give up their essential roles. In lower middle-income countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, where volunteers tasked with the distribution of antifilarial medications are already in short supply, losing valuable human health resources can ultimately cause MDA programs to fail. As such, it is crucial for implementers …

Case 4 : Combatting The Opioid Crisis: Expanding Naloxone Kit Distribution To Niagara Health Emergency Departments, Kate Harold, Nina Jain-Sheehan, Amardeep Thind

Western Public Health Casebooks

A regional hospital system is exploring the possibility of making naloxone kits accessible to patients in the emergency department of its hospital sites. The current hospital staff are reluctant to distribute these kits. The organization is trying to determine the best approach to guaranteeing program participation. The expansion of hospital access to naloxone kits is a direct response to the ongoing opioid crisis across Canada. Opioid-related deaths have spiked in recent years and various national and provincial initiatives are underway to reduce these deaths. Staff reluctance to distributing lifesaving naloxone kits in emergency departments stems from their lack of understanding …

Case 3 : The Missing Four Million: Working To Increase The Case Finding Rate For People With Tb, Ashley Fantauzzi, Taryn Russell, Shannon L. Sibbald

Western Public Health Casebooks

Paru Hari, an Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), lives in Bihar, India, one of the poorest states in the country. Paru is involved in daily outreach within her community to facilitate community member access to health care facilities, administer medications, treat minor ailments, and generate health awareness. The majority of her work involves antenatal checkups, immunizations, and mild sickness treatments. However, with Bihar reporting approximately 70,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) annually and many cases going unreported and undiagnosed (Fathima, Varadharajan, Krishnamurthy, Ananthkumar & Mony, 2015; RESULTS Canada, 2018b), Paru decided to take action. She proposed that ASHAs act as …

Case 5 : Active Schools: A Method To Combat Sedentary Behaviour?, Tierra Hohn, Lesley James, Gerald Mckinley

Western Public Health Casebooks

After a phone call from Jessica Myles, a concerned principal, Amelia Brooks, the Director of Education with Maple Leaf District School Board, decided she needed to reduce sedentary behaviour among many students in her district. As she approached the end of her term as Director of Education, Amelia realized that if she wanted to take action and combat sedentary behaviour, the time was now. As a trained health promoter, Amelia knows the benefits and evidence around Active Schools, not just in improving physical activity, but also in supporting a culture of inclusive physical activity. Most Active Schools aim to promote …

Case 6 : Aqcess: Access To Quality Care Through Extending And Strengthening Health Systems, Rukhsar Jetha, Rachel Pell, Fawad Akbari, Amardeep Thind

Western Public Health Casebooks

Access to Quality Care through Extending and Strengthening Health Systems (AQCESS) is an Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) initiative that works in partnership with underserved populations in Kenya, Pakistan, Mali, and Mozambique to improve maternal, newborn, and child health. The project targets regions and populations where MNCH indicators such as maternal mortality, under-five mortality, and stunting rates are particularly high. In these regions, women and children still lack access to essential, quality health services. AQCESS projects help reduce maternal and child mortality in targeted regions by focusing on improving delivery of essential MNCH health services, improving utilization of essential MNCH …

Case 7 : Population Health Surveillance In Finland: Threats To Historically Dependable Surveillance Methodology, Kristia Maatta, Katja Borodulin, Ava John-Baptiste

Western Public Health Casebooks

The case outlines the challenges that the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, Finland is facing in light of an ongoing national health care reform. The health care reform has taken precedence over other research activities, and the Institute is anticipating changes to population health surveillance methods. The Institute elected a new Director General in the fall of 2018 who will influence decisions about which population surveillance data collection methods are used. The Health Monitoring Unit at the Institute fears that the Director General will decide that all surveillance data will be collected using administrative patient registries with …

Case 8 : Reaching The Hard-To-Reach: Conducting Research On Elder Abuse In Toronto's Arab Community, Matthew Maelzer, Sepali Guruge, Amardeep Thind

Western Public Health Casebooks

A number of factors common to the post-migration context have been shown to negatively impact the lives of new immigrants to Canada. Within the Arab community in Ashcroft, certain factors such as sponsorship requirements, intergenerational cohabitation practices, financial dependence, language barriers, and cultural stigmas often act as risk factors, increasing the vulnerability of older adults to abuse. Caroline Rochester has recently accepted the research coordinator position for the Elder Abuse Project at Rudyard University. The goal of the study is to identify the key factors that increase the risk of abuse of elders in the Arab community. Once these factors …

Case 2 : Hurricanes And Health: A Systems Thinking Approach To Understanding Complexity And Context, Vendela Edmonds, Leonardo Hernandez, Regna Darnell, Charles Trick

Western Public Health Casebooks

This case examines the complexity of responding to a natural disaster. Leona Hernandez, a water and sanitation engineer from the Pan American Health Organization, is in charge of coordinating the water and sanitation response on the island of Dominica following Hurricane Maria in October of 2017. Upon visiting one of the shelters in the remote fishing village of Scotts Head, she becomes aware of the precarious environmental conditions in the community. Many of the residents are distressed by the complete destruction of their surroundings, and a lack of running water has led to a reliance on drinking from the river. …

Case 9 : Achieving Health Equity In Ontario: Increasing Capacity For Relationship Building With Indigenous Communities, Ryan Mcconnell, Lloy Wylie

Western Public Health Casebooks

Paul Green is concerned that his organization is not meeting the requirements of the modernized Ontario Public Health Standards’ Health Equity Standard after his colleagues ask for direction on working with local Indigenous communities. Under the third requirement of the new Health Equity Standard, all boards of health must engage with Indigenous communities and organizations, which must include the “fostering and creation of meaningful relationships”. As the new Health Equity Manager at Turtle Creek Public Health (TCPH), Paul is tasked with developing a set of recommendations for organizational action. After receiving advice from a colleague, Paul decides that the next …

Case 11 : Crypto Climate Creep: The Movement Of Tropical Infectious Disease To The Arctic, Sukhmeet Singh Sachal, Michel Deilgat, Mark Speechley

Western Public Health Casebooks

Dr. Jacob Sanders was excited to attend the Inuvik Sunrise Festival and see friends, old and new. The evening was cut short due to the snowstorm, but the next morning, Jacob was very ill. Not knowing the cause, he assumed it was the food: Muktuk (beluga blubber), beaver, caribou, bearded seal, or blue mussels. Severely dehydrated from diarrhea, he was admitted to Inuvik Regional Hospital. Insufficient lab equipment at the hospital meant the stool samples had to be sent far away to Nunavik, Quebec where the public health unit had an onsite molecular test to diagnose the problem. When the …

Case 10 : Supporting Students With Learning Disabilities: Reducing Secondary School Non-Completion And Its Associated Health Disparities, Avery Prince, Mary-Liz Warwick, Wendy Larouche, Gerald Mckinley

Western Public Health Casebooks

Shelley van Dam needs to write a policy brief for her board on the effects of learning disabilities. This policy brief is a response to the upcoming termination of some of the funding for the Learning Disabilities Association of Sudbury (LDAS). The LDAS provides various programs that support students and families that have, or are in the process of being identified as having, a learning disability. The LDAS is a not-for-profit organization that operates throughout Greater Sudbury and across Northeastern Ontario to provide assistance to students who have learning disabilities so they attain the highest level of education possible. Some …

Case 12 : Policy Window - When Lyme Is In The Limelight, Shahzadi Zain, Michel Deilgat, Amardeep Thind

Western Public Health Casebooks

Melissa Doug is a senior policy analyst at the Centre for Food-Borne, Environmental and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Public Health Agency of Canada. She has been tasked with preparing Question Period (QP) notes for the Minister of Health. She has very little time to prepare a clear, succinct, and jargon-free note by 8:30 a.m. for the Director’s approval. Once the note is approved, the Director will forward it to the Minster of Health with an update on the status of activities being undertaken for the Action Plan on Lyme Disease. The QP note also includes an update on the …

Case 13 : Sustainable Mhealth Innovations - Repurposing The Collective Comfort Pilot Project, Julie Zasada, Andrew Johnson, Shannon L. Sibbald

Western Public Health Casebooks

The Collective Comfort project (CC project) is a mobile health (mHealth) pilot project created by the Digital Innovation team in the Education Department at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The CC project provides safe, online social support networks—a crucial social determinant of health—that are accessible everywhere to people who have anxiety disorders.

Unfortunately, funding has come to an end for this pilot project. CAMH’s Director of Education, Heather Grohl, and her team are tasked with repurposing the CC project mobile application for three organizations—the Alzheimer Society of Toronto, Homeless Hub, and Veterans Affairs Canada. These organizations are …

Case 14 : Development Of An Electronic Health Record Strategy At The Glenburn Public Health Unit, Shannon L. Sibbald, J. Ross Graham, Daniel J. Lizotte

Western Public Health Casebooks

Medical or electronic health records (EHR) are electronic databases that capture an individual’s health and care history throughout their life. EHRs are often used as a single repository of patient information that is shared among multiple health care providers (such as hospitals, laboratories, and family physicians). The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care requires all EHR systems in public health units be provincially certified; however, their budget does not provide units with the necessary funding for EHR implementation. The Glenburn Public Health Unit (GPHU) is conducting a review of their recordkeeping practices and has identified a need to streamline …

Complete 2019 Casebook

Western Public Health Casebooks

No abstract provided.