The Salt Spring Forum continues its video-only series with a video interview with Dr. Jane Philpott. She is the special health adviser to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation and in July this year will take up a new role as dean of the faculty of health sciences and director of the school of medicine at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
Recently she has worked in the COVID-19 assessment centre at the Markham Stouffville Hospital in Ontario and answered the call to help out at Participation House in Markham, a facility for vulnerable adults left short-staffed after an outbreak of the coronavirus.
Her interviewer will be author and physician Kevin Patterson.
The focus of their discussion will be COVID-19 and public health. How is the system coping? What does it tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of a public health system? Has government adequately supported health workers and facilities? How can the health system be better prepared for the next pandemic?
Dr. Philpott has been a family physician for 17 years in Ontario and has also practiced in West Africa and enabled medical education in Ethiopia. She has fundraised and promoted awareness for HIV/AIDS and worked for refugee advocacy and the social determinants of health.
Dr. Philpott was in the spotlight for being in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet for three years as minister of health, minister of Indigenous services and president of the Treasury Board. She resigned in 2019 over the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Both Philpott and moderator Patterson have been very much on the frontlines of the fight against the pandemic and have direct knowledge as to how the system and health services are coping.
Dr. Patterson is a resident of Salt Spring and practices internal and critical care medicine in Nanaimo and Hudson Bay. He is also a writer of memoir and fiction, winning the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction prize and Victoria Butler book prize in 2003 for his collection of short fiction Country of Cold. His 2006 novel Consumption focuses on diseases amongst the Inuit.
To be part of this discussion, please email questions on this subject no later than 6 p.m. on Wednesday, May 13 to [email protected].
Please include your name with your question, and indicate whether you wish to remain anonymous.
The finished video will be available online by Sunday, May 17 and published on The Tyee shortly afterwards.
Previous Salt Spring Forum video interviews published by The Tyee are:
This Pandemic Is about Human Rights: Alex Neve of Amnesty International
Bill McKibben Talks COVID-19 and Climate Change
China and the Pandemic: Talking with Historian Timothy Brook
All about COVID-19 with Physician and Writer Kevin Patterson
Read more: Health, Coronavirus, Media
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