This webinar is part of our webinar series on ‘Mobilizing Social Determinants to Reduce Healthcare Demand in Nova Scotia.’
The series aims to address the government's current strategy of merely increasing healthcare supply, which overlooks the fundamental causes of healthcare demand. By focusing on social determinants, we can significantly improve health outcomes and relieve pressure on our healthcare services.
Focus of this webinar: The impact of low wages, minimum wage policies, and income assistance on financial security and health in Nova Scotia.
Objectives of this webinar:
Analyze the correlation between economic instability and health outcomes.
Discuss policy changes needed to improve financial security.
Explore interventions to mitigate health risks from economic hardship.
Speakers:
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Lars Osberg is currently McCulloch Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University, Halifax, but he began life in Ottawa, Ontario. As an undergraduate, he attended Queen’s University, Kingston and the London School of Economics and Political Science. After two years working for the Tanzania Sisal Corporation as a CUSO volunteer, he went to Yale University for his Ph.D. He has had visiting positions at the economics departments of New York University and the Universities of Cambridge, Sydney, New South Wales, Essex and Queensland and at Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA), Dar es Salaam, the Indira Ghandi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai, the Statistics Directorate, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris and the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford.
His first book was Economic Inequality in Canada (1981). His 2018 book The Age of Increasing Inequality: the Astonishing Rise of Canada’s 1% was awarded the 2019 Purvis Prize of the Canadian Economics Association. His most recent book is The Scandalous Rise of Inequality in Canada (2024). In between there have been nine others, four editions of an introductory economics textbook and numerous refereed articles in professional journals, book chapters, reviews, reports and miscellaneous publications. Among other professional responsibilities, he was President of the Canadian Economics Association in 1999-2000. His current research emphasizes the implications of increasing inequality and the measurement and determinants of poverty, economic insecurity, inequality of opportunity and economic well-being
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Rebecca: Rebecca Cheff is a Knowledge Translation Specialist at the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health and is the project lead of the Mind the Disruption podcast. Before joining the NCCDH in 2021, she led a range of equity-focused policy research projects and networks, related to decent work, income security, and access to health and social services, for six years at the Wellesley Institute. Rebecca has a Master of Public Health from the University of Toronto.
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Christine Saulnier is Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Nova Scotia. She has a doctorate in Political Science from York University. She leads the living wage calculations for communities across Atlantic Canada and serves as a co-author of the annual child and family poverty report cards for Nova Scotia.