Helping people runs in the family
Health Minister Jane Philpott passed words of wisdom to daughter pursuing medicine
OTTAWA— Dr. Jane Philpott woke up in the middle of the night, her mind racing with the significance of what the future would bring.
One of her daughters, Bethany, was about to begin medical school at McMaster University, and Philpott had much to pass on to her after having devoted her own career to medicine at home and abroad.
“It was on my mind and I just had all these ideas, thinking of things I wanted to share with her and I got up and wrote it down,” Philpott said of a letter to her daughter she published as a blog post on Aug. 24, 2014.
The lessons she wanted to pass on to her daughter reveal how she views the art of medicine, the relationships doctors have with their patients, but also, most significantly now that she has been appointed federal health minister, her perspective on Canadian health care in general. “Remember what really makes people sick and what makes them well. You will be taught about immunology, pathology, infections, and much more. But you already know that the social determinants of health actually set the stage for all those biomedical actors,” wrote Philpott, who left her job as chief of the department of family medicine at Markham Stouffville Hospital to run for the Liberals last year.
Philpott also spent nine years working as a doctor in Niger, where she lost a 2-year-old daughter to meningitis.
“Do your part to influence those social determinants. Speak up when you see the impact of poverty, unemployment, violence and more,” wrote Philpott, who founded the Give a Day to World AIDS charity and helped develop the first family medicine training program at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.
Bethany Philpott, 25, who is now in her second year of medical school and said she is leaning toward specializing in palliative care or psychia- try, said many of the lessons her mother shared were things she had already learned from her throughout her life.
“Some of the things, like listening to your patients and engaging in emotion with them and being attentive to the social determinants of health, are things that I hope I will be able to keep in mind going forward,” said Bethany, who will start her clinical experience in a couple of weeks.
Jane Philpott, who was elected to represent the riding of Markham-Stouffville Oct. 19, said she is still being briefed on her new portfolio, but said she is eager to take on an ambitious mandate that includes improving home care, mental-health services and reducing the cost of prescription drugs.
Philpott also expects to be playing a role as health minister in Liberal plans to legalize marijuana and develop legislation to respond to the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling striking down the ban on physicianassisted suicide.
Philpott said Canadians can expect the Liberal government to play a more active role on the health-care file than the Conservatives did, but that does not necessarily mean taking a strict strings-attached approach to health transfers.
“I think Canadians are expecting the federal government as it plays that role to work with our provincial and territorial partners. That doesn’t necessarily imply conditions, but it implies working together respectfully and agreeing upon priorities,” Philpott said.
Asked whether Quebec would be allowed to opt out of federal-provincial health agreements, Philpott said: “We will always work in a respectful relationship with provinces and territories and be respectful of some of the historic arrangements that certain provinces have requested in the past.”
The Liberal government’s platform also includes plans to restrict commercial marketing of junk food to children and regulate a reduction of sodium in processed foods, which will likely face tough opposition from industry.
Philpott said she would consult widely, but also base decisions on science.
“Science obviously will play an important role and everything we do will have to be evidence based, but you can’t ignore any of the stakeholders at the table, so we will work respectfully with industry but make our decisions on the basis of evidence,” said Philpott.