Wall can set health example

While Premiers Brad Wall and Robert Ghiz are crisscrossing the country looking for health-care innovation, perhaps the Saskatchewan leader should ask his Prince Edward Island counterpart about First Nations children in the East.

According to a report released by Statistics Canada this week, First Nations children living off-reserve in the Atlantic provinces and Ontario are significantly more likely to be in good health than their counterparts in Saskatchewan. In fact, the Saskatchewan off-reserve Native children were less likely to be in good health than those in Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec.

The study makes it clear that this difference in health isn’t related to culture, geography or genetics. It’s related to such things as housing conditions, the numbers of times the children are moved, the family or parental support they experience, the perceived conditions of health-care facilities, and the prevalence of smoking in the home. What the findings suggest is that such conditions are worse in Saskatchewan than they are in much of the rest of Canada.

And considering the long-term cost of dealing with the chronic health problems these children must endure, perhaps the best place for Mr. Wall to look for innovation to cut health-care costs is where we already know will yield positive results.

It’s important to note that the Statistics Canada study only looked at off-reserve children. That means nationwide 43 per cent of First Nation children, who directly fall under the responsibility of the federal government because they live on reserves, were left out of the study. Since Native families often move between urban homes and their reserves, it isn’t clear how much of the responsibility can fall on the provincial governments to improve the children’s health.

For example, according to the study, 30 per cent of First Nations children aged three or older who live off-reserve were reported to have dental problems. According to a story in today’s paper by Starphoenix reporter Janet French, a disproportionate number of kids who require dental surgery are from First Nations in northern Saskatchewan, where the water systems aren’t fluoridated.

But the fact that Saskatchewan outcomes are worse than in its sister jurisdictions suggests that there are things the province can do to mitigate problems.

The Statistics Canada study makes it clear where the effort should be focused. Children who grow up in homes in communities where there is greater support and education about, for example, the impact of smoking and substance abuse on the health of children, the benefits of breastfeeding, or where measures are taken to improve housing quality and supply to prevent overcrowding, are less likely to require costly health care.

Rather than lobbying for laws that will increase incarcerations rates and times — something experts point out has a disproportionate impact on the poor and socially disadvantaged — perhaps Saskatchewan can lead the national health-care debate with innovation in its own back yard.