B.C. children healthy, but there’s room to improve

I was glad to be able to make time recently to review the Provincial Health Officer’s (PHO) report on child and youth health in B.C., released in November and titled “Is ‘Good,’ Good Enough? The Health and Well-being of Children and Youth in B.C.”

This report, released in partnership with Child Health B.C., is the first of its kind in Canada, and is a great opportunity for us to learn where we’re succeeding as a province, and where there’s room for improvement.

Overall, it was encouraging to hear that the health and well-being of B.C.’s children and youth is quite good, and that we have made progressive improvements in recent years.

The report showed we’re doing well in many areas: the infant mortality rate has decreased; visible tooth decay in young children has decreased; there are fewer children with unmet food needs; and many kids are reporting participation in extracurricular activities and sports.

Additionally, more B.C. students are eating fruits and vegetables, with 94 per cent reporting that they ate fruits and vegetables the day before. And, in the 10 years between 2003 and 2013, the percentage of students who reported ever having used tobacco decreased from 34 to 20.7 per cent, while the percentage of those who reported having used marijuana also decreased.

In B.C., we’ve introduced many measures to make sure moms and dads have the support they need to do the important work of raising healthy kids, in an effort to produce improvements and positive health outcomes like these.

To encourage healthy eating in schools, we introduced the B.C. School Fruit and Vegetable Nutritional Program, which supports healthy eating in schools by delivering fruits and vegetables to more than 1,400 B.C. schools, including 40 schools in the Central Okanagan, 13 times every year.

This program, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, combined with the fact that the sale of junk food in our schools has been banned since 2008 and that all K-9 students are required to partake in 30 minutes of physical activity daily, has done a lot to promote healthconsciousness in our schools.

For families raising active kids, we also have the children’s fitness credit in B.C. — a non-refundable tax credit of 5.06 percent of eligible expenditures up to $500 for each child.

We’ve also worked hard at discouraging tobacco use, and protecting our kids from exposure to second-hand smoke with measures like banning smoking in all public places and in vehicles with occupants under the age of 16.

It’s thanks to measures like these and the conscientious efforts of B.C.’s parents that the children and youth of B.C. are in good health, overall.

However, just as the PHO’s report asks, we must ask ourselves — is “good” good enough for our kids and grandkids? One look at my own granddaughter Luna is enough to answer that question for me.

The report points out several areas where there’s more to be done for children and youth across B.C. While our youth are reporting increased levels of family and school connectedness, there are fewer of them who feel they have an adult they could speak with about a serious problem. There also remains significant disparities in general health status, geographically and as relates to sex and gender.

We are fortunate in the Okanagan to benefit from one measure taken recently to increase access to supports for our youth. Foundry Kelowna, a new integrated youth-service centre, opened in December and will make it easier for youth to get any primary care, mental health, substance use or social services help and support that they need.

It’s good to know that B.C. is a leader among provinces when it comes to the

health of our kids. But we didn’t get here by being complacent, and we won’t rest on any laurels now. In fact, the opposite is true — reports like this one from the PHO can act as a guide as we plan for the future.

Together with support from parents, communities, schools and health authorities, we will continue to work hard to ensure we’re pushing forward from “good” health outcomes to the excellence that our kids and grandkids deserve, right across the province.

To read the full report, visit ChildHealthIndicatorsBC.ca..

Norm Letnick is the MLA for Kelownalake Country and B.C.’s minister of agriculture. He is an interest in the field of health care.