Category: Health & Well-Being

Written by Ethan Pancer, St. Mary’s University, Matthew Philp, Toronto Metropolitan University and Theo Noseworthy, York University. Originally published in The Conversation. 

Social media posts featuring unhealthy foods get more likes and engagement. But there are ways to change that. Photo credit: Borzoo Moazami, Unsplash. 

In today’s world, our diets are often packed with fats and sugars. Our ancient instinct to crave calorie-rich foods, which once helped us survive, now leads to harmful health side-effects.

To counteract this, food content creators on social media have been trying to push healthy eating and healthy eating content.

But here’s the kicker — this content doesn’t get much engagement. Instead, posts that show unhealthy, high-calorie foods get more likes, shares and comments. This popularity of junk food online may tempt content creators and algorithms to show more of the same, tilting our view of “normal” eating habits towards unhealthy choices. In the long run, this could fuel the obesity epidemic.

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So, the challenge is clear: How do we make healthy foods as click-worthy as their unhealthy counterparts?

Written by Manavi Handa, Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo credit: Shutterstock. Originally published in The Conversation.

Research shows that uninsured people are more likely to get care later in pregnancy, and less care overall. This increases risks for mothers and babies.

On March 31, 2023 the Ford government in Ontario ended the expanded health-care funding it put in place when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.

This funding allowed everyone in Ontario to access essential health care. For the hundreds of thousands of people living in the province without health insurance, this meant access to necessary surgeries, emergency care and labour and delivery services without thousands of dollars in hospital and physician bills.

As a midwife who has worked in Toronto for over 20 years, largely with uninsured populations, and an associate professor who has focused my research and activism on this issue, I am acutely aware of how these cuts will impact pregnant people and ultimately all Canadians.

Insurance status

There are many reasons someone may not have health insurance. These can include homelessness; mental health issues; addiction; having documents withheld by an abusive partner, landlord or employer; and, for a growing number of people who live and work across Canada, lack of legal immigration status.

Increasingly, people may spend years with precarious immigration status, all the while building a life here and eagerly waiting for applications to come through. For example, a student applying for a work permit may fall out of status while one application expires and another comes through.

Research shows that uninsured people are more likely to get care later in pregnancy and less care overall. It is well accepted across medicine that prenatal care is linked to healthier outcomes for pregnant people and babies. In particular, prenatal care is associated with dramatically lower rates of preterm birth and low birth weight babies.

Health-care costs for babies born too small and too early are among the highest of all health-care expenditures. It’s estimated that Canada spends about $8 billion per year in health costs related to preterm babies. Babies born too small and too early are also among the most likely to have lifelong health issues, including profound cognitive and physical impairment.

There is a simple bottom line argument here: prenatal care is cheap and sick babies are very expensive.

Refugees in all but name

With increasing global health and economic disparities, we are seeing more people cross and/or stay within our borders to work and live. Like many others who work with these populations, I can say that many who do not have refugee status are refugees in all but name: escaping impossible conditions and trying to build a future here.

The same week the Ontario government discontinued its expanded health-care coverage, eight people drowned trying to cross the St. Lawrence River in Québec while trying to escape deportation. These are the acts of desperate people.

While hospitals are not going to turn people away in emergencies, many pregnant people need access to hospital-based care before there is an emergency, and in fact to avoid an emergency. For example, someone who needs a caesarean section because labour would be too risky, may be required to pay $6,000 or even more before they can access a provider.

For some people, this could mean deciding between rent, feeding their children or getting basic health care.

Inevitable emergencies

It is inevitable that many people will not have access to prenatal care and will wind up in an emergency department, where the hospital will be ethically required to provide care anyway. Hospitals requiring advance payment does not make people less pregnant, less high-risk or less in need of a caesarean. It means people going without care and coming to the hospital in need of emergency surgery, which has the highest cost and risks of any birth.

Adding another layer of complexity to this puzzle is that, as global caesarean section rates skyrocket, more and more undocumented migrants in Canada have had a previous caesarean section. For many, this means the safest option for delivery is a repeat caesarean section.

Putting all the pieces together, discontinuing expanded health-care funding means higher numbers of already marginalized people having less prenatal care, more preterm births and low birth weight babies, and more emergency caesarean sections for delivery — all of which result in worse outcomes, more cost on the system and more moral distress on health care providers. How is this a good idea from any angle?

A study released just one week before these cuts were announced showed the many benefits of having the expanded funding in place, including improved access to prenatal care. It also demonstrated the relief health-care providers felt at not having the moral distress of having to decide who was able to access necessary care.

Lessons learned

The expanded funding put in place during COVID-19 revealed a few things.

First, the fact that it was implemented is an acknowledgement that it was needed. If we have universal health coverage for all who live here, why did we need the program in the first place?

Second, it demonstrated that it was not a massive burden to our health-care system to provide this care. The Ontario Medical Association estimated this program cost $15 million over three years. Even if it was several times more, this is very little of our health-care budget. By providing primary and preventive care, as well as prenatal care, the program likely saved money by avoiding more expensive acute and emergency care, and it certainly saved lives.

Third, this program brought caregivers and organizations together, with health-care associations asserting that this is a health equity issue, not a medical tourism issue. Immigration status has long been established as a social determinant of health, along with factors including poverty, racialization and education level. It is about time we address this issue in Canada.

The decision to discontinue extended care is going to cost us. Not just in terms of health-care dollars — it is always better to treat high blood pressure than manage a stroke — but in terms of our ethics.

Several decades ago, we decided as a country that everyone — rich or poor — deserves access to health care. Canadians have taken pride in this and it is part of our national identity. Until everyone is covered, we need to acknowledge that we do not, in fact, have universal health care, and decide what this means to us as a country.

This article was co-authored by Shezeen Suleman of Toronto Metropolitan University, and Rachel Spitzer, AJ Mata and Jenny Yang Klimis of University of Toronto.

Written by Alison Derry, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles, Universitat de Barcelona & Stephanie J Melles, Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo credit: Author provided. Originally published in The Conversation. 

Roads require de-icing strategies in northern regions, but this practice has negative effects on aquatic biodiversity.

Freshwater ecosystems around the world are becoming saltier and saltier. Many human-driven factors contribute to freshwater salinization, including: irrigation, oil extraction, potash mining, and road de-icing.

As a result, salts enter waterways. But as bad news never comes alone, the salts are often accompanied by a toxic cocktail of other pollutants, whose combined toxicological effects are largely unknown.

Although the problem of rising freshwater salinization went largely unaddressed for many decades, it has gained considerable attention during the last 20 years.

Scientists around the world are working together to understand the ecological impacts of increasing salinization on aquatic biodiversity and food webs. Our ultimate goal? To examine the adequacy of water quality toxicity thresholds for the protection of aquatic life.

Salinization, a major problem

Canada is home to a majority of the world’s freshwater resources, mostly concentrated in the provinces of Ontario and Québec, where close to 5 million tons of road salt are applied annually to de-ice roads.

Combined with climate change and increasing frequency and duration of drought in many regions of the world, the problem is getting worse. This is a major concern. Why? Because the availability of freshwater resources will become a critical factor for humanity over the next 50 years.

Researchers from around the world mobilized

We recently presented a series of articles in a special issue on freshwater salinization in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters, published last February.

In this special issue, we focus on sodium chloride (NaCl), the same molecule found in table salt, as a key agent of freshwater salinization. We highlight a series of co-ordinated field experiments, conducted by researchers in North America and Europe, that have addressed the impacts of freshwater salinization on zooplankton (microscopic crustaceans) at a regional scale.

Zooplankton are an ecologically critical group in aquatic food webs and are often used as indicators to detect environmental change due to their sensitive ecological tolerances.

The main conclusions of these experiments are as follows:

• Water quality guidelines in Canada and the United States (standards) do not adequately protect freshwater zooplankton, which could lead to an increase in the abundance of algae, which the zooplankton feed on. This is because when zooplankton abundance decreases, especially for large grazers such as Daphnia, phytoplankton can proliferate under conditions of reduced predation;
• Salinization of freshwater systematically leads to a loss of abundance and diversity of zooplankton in all regions; and
• Individuals of the same zooplankton species do not all exhibit the same tolerance to salinity. Thus, this variation may interfere with our ability to predict community-level responses. Water quality guidelines may therefore need to be adjusted to become more region-specific.

A matter of regulation

Many questions remain unanswered. However, what we do now know is that long-term water quality guidelines (Canada: 120 mg Cl⁻¹L⁻¹; United States: 230 mg Cl⁻¹L⁻¹) and in the short term (Canada: 640 mg Cl⁻¹L⁻¹; United States: 860 mg Cl⁻¹L⁻¹) for chloride concentrations are too high to protect aquatic life in Canada and in the United States. For reference, a pinch of salt in a pot of water corresponds to approximately 0.3 g of Cl⁻¹/L⁻¹. In other words, adverse effects are observed at much lower concentrations. Regulations in Canada and the United States should therefore be reviewed. In Europe, the water quality standards for salinity for the protection of aquatic life in freshwater ecosystems are mostly absent.

The importance of taking concrete action

Water quality guidelines for the protection of aquatic life are generally established using laboratory tests (called toxicological tests) on a single species.

However, aquatic habitats harbour a complex array of predators, prey, competitors, and pathogens, the interactions of which can limit our ability to predict the responses of communities and species to pollutants .

Thus, the collective research published in this special issue also highlights the importance of understanding ecological responses in multi-species communities in natural settings to assess the responses of freshwater life to human impacts.

Overall, we should develop alternative applications and technologies that are more sustainable and efficient.

We also need to establish more appropriate water quality guidelines to improve controls on salts entering our freshwater environments to reduce adverse effects on aquatic life and the quality of our freshwater resources.

Written by Eugene Y. Chan, Toronto Metropolitan University and Liangyan Wang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Photo credit: Shutterstock. Originally published in The Conversation. 

With so much competition, food marketers need to grab the attention of consumers so they buy their products, not another competitors. This is why product packaging is so important. 

In 2018, Statistics Canada reported that nearly one in three Canadians were obese. Similar figures have been reported in Australia, but more concerning is the United States, where over forty percent of the population is obese.

Obesity is not the only diet-related illness to be concerned about — diabetes is just as prevalent. When it comes to such diseases, diet and physical activity help reduce the chance of being diagnosed. In fact, when it comes to Type 2 diabetes, diet and physical activity can prevent 50 per cent of it.

Food packaging plays an important role in diet-related illnesses. We live in a food environment that prioritizes marketing, sometimes to the detriment of our health.

Consider the average supermarket, where there can be upwards of 60,000 different products in a store. With so much competition, food marketers need to grab the attention of consumers so they buy their products, not a competitor’s. This is why product packaging is so important.

Food marketing uses a variety of tactics, like using bright, bold colours and eye-popping visuals, to try and persuade consumers to buy certain products. They also change the size of food images shown on products — the size of the chip on Dorito’s packaging or the size of the bread on a jar of peanut butter, for example.

Bigger is better

Our recent research looked at how something seemingly innocuous, like the size of food images on product packaging, can impact how likely it is that someone buys a product. While the size of this image might appear to be harmless, our research found that it can increase the food’s appeal to consumers: the larger the image, the better tasting consumers believe the food will be, which increases the chance of them purchasing the product.

The reason for this is a concept called mental imagery, which suggests that the way people visualize a product in their minds can make them think a product is better, higher quality or, in our case, tastier.

This has implications when it comes to food choice. When thinking about what foods are most appealing, junk foods, such as chips, popcorn and candy, come to mind. These kinds of products often have large, exaggerated images of food on their packaging. Since the size of the food image on these products are bigger, it makes consumers psychologically salivate more, persuading them into buying and eating these unhealthier foods.

Colour matters

Ours isn’t the only research that has been done on health habits and food product packaging. Similar research has also found that the colour of food packaging and the location of food images on a product also impacts whether or not consumers are more likely to buy a product.

When it comes to colours, red significantly increases a food’s perceived taste, while green increases the food’s perceived healthiness. Food images that are located higher on the package suggest that the food is “light” and therefore “healthy,” making it more likely for a consumer to purchase the product.

Previous studies have also found that junk food brand names are easily remembered by children, and parents often listen to their children when making food choices. Also, the use of traffic light signals on food labels promotes healthier food choices by allowing people to identify the nutritional content directly on the food package.

Knowing and understanding how appearance impacts food desirability is crucial for marketers and has resulted in a special visual language among consumers and products. This allows, for example, people with diabetes and hypertension to quickly locate foods that are appropriate for their needs in a grocery store. However, it also makes some consumers vulnerable to marketing ploys when they aren’t aware of how advertisers are manipulating them.

Healthy shopping strategies

There are some strategies consumers can use when shopping to help maintain healthy habits. Instead of focusing on the images of food on packaging, we recommend that consumers focus more on the nutritional needs and requirements.

Consumers should read the entire nutritional label front and back to try to make the best informed decision possible and try not to be swayed by what the image on a package looks like.

Don’t let the size of the food image tempt you: some Pringles or gummy bears is fine as a little indulgence, but if you’re tempted by these food products every time you step into your local grocery, it can have serious consequences for your heath.

Food product packaging doesn’t just have implications for consumers, but for policymakers as well. Most governments, including Canada’s, focus on nutrition labels and how food marketers advertise to consumers of all ages, such as rules limiting junk food ads during Saturday morning cartoons. But regulation should start even more fundamentally with the packaging itself.

While it might seem extreme to regulate the size of a scoop of ice cream on a box of Chapman’s, food image size is especially relevant when it comes to junk food. If we want to reduce the prevalence of diet-related health issues, like obesity and diabetes, regulating the size of images, which is what we see first and foremost in the grocery aisle, on food products might just be what’s needed.

Written by Sarah Elton, Toronto Metropolitan University and Donald C. Cole, University of Toronto. Photo credit THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn. Originally published in The Conversation. 

Community vegetable gardens, such as this one in Pickering, Ont., support health and should be seen as part of the city’s food system.

It’s garden season, which means gardeners are beginning to enjoy their homegrown vegetables. However, for those who live in cities, urban life can reinforce the idea that gardens are a bonus, maybe a hobby, but not a necessity of life.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, supermarkets were kept open because of the key role they play in feeding us. But the Ontario government originally shut down community gardens, ignoring that gardens also feed us. The gardens were only opened again after public pressure.

As public health researchers with a longstanding interest in food systems and health, we’ve found that, contrary to the idea of gardening as a hobby, gardens are essential to life.

We came to this conclusion based on interviews with diverse gardeners in Toronto, a survey of more than 100 people and extensive participant observation — which in this case meant gardening together. Study participants included yard gardeners, community plot gardeners, rooftop gardeners and even people tending to food-producing plants inside their apartment. Our findings are published in the peer-reviewed journal, Food, Culture & Society.

Growing food in the city

To grow food, you have to be committed. There’s the weeding and watering, and dealing with squirrels and raccoons who might get to the food first.

You must invest in seeds and equipment and there could be a fee paid to the city for access to an allotment plot if you don’t have space of your own. If the garden you tend isn’t near where you live, you also must consider transportation time. And after all that, the crop might fail.

Although prices are rising, produce is ample in grocery stores. So to better understand the role of gardening in the city, we asked why do people do it in the first place?

The most common response was that gardening was perceived to boost health. One retired worker summed it up well:

“In wintertime, it’s necessary to do more workouts. But summertime, if I miss the gym, I don’t feel bad because I am doing more.”

Others noticed that gardening supported their mental health. They felt calm with the plants, their mind alert. In some cases, the gardens gave participants a reason to wake up in the morning at times when they were experiencing mental health problems.

To several people, the plants were even seen to provide companionship. “I’m living a healthy life because of my garden,” said one participant. Gardening contributed to their happiness.

Food and food security

Another reason why people told us they gardened was, not surprisingly, for food. Most gardeners grew a wide selection of food-producing plants, with 31 per cent of respondents to the survey reporting that they grew as many as 10 to 20 different kinds.

Importantly, several of the gardeners who provided interviews and who also identified as low-income, stressed the importance of gardening to their food security. One gardener, who has a small plot on church-owned land, told us she grew so much food that she didn’t have to go to the supermarket in the summer, and that helped with her family’s finances.

Another gardener said he was able to make a significant contribution to his family by producing enough vegetables on his allotment plot to not only eat in the summer but to freeze for winter. And one woman grew the organic food she couldn’t afford at the store.

People not only kept this food for themselves, but they shared it with friends and family.

Cultural connection

For gardeners who have cultural ties to other countries, some of whom are newer immigrants, growing their own food is a way to ensure access to the kinds of vegetables they grew up eating.

“We left but we still want the taste,” one man said of why he grows a kind of spinach from South Asia. At the store, these vegetables — if they are available — are expensive and aren’t as fresh.

Our findings reflect what other researchers have found about the cultural, health and food security benefits of gardens.

Gardening and urban health

So if growing food in gardens in the city is central to health, food security and culture, how might policymakers think about gardening differently?

We argue that gardens should be considered essential parts of our food system. Gardens are important to the people who tend to them — and also to the many people whose names are on waiting lists for space to grow food in the city, who may not have space of their own.

In our survey, people who owned their homes were more likely to report that they’d been growing food for more than 10 years. Homeownership often includes outdoor space in the form of a yard or balcony, which others may not have access to. The pandemic reminded us how many of our eco-social systems are inequitable and fragile, and other researchers have documented how people turned to gardens at this time.

Various levels of government and other institutions with jurisdiction over land (such as those that oversee hydro corridors as well as schools, religious institutions, apartment and condo land owners) must take action to broaden secure access to garden space, in particular for people who don’t have a backyard.

We should be investing more in publicly accessible gardens as an essential part of our food system.

Written by Kelley A. McClinchey, Wilfrid Laurier University; Frederic Dimanche, Ryerson University. Photo credit: Shutterstock. Originally published in The Conversation.

Media coverage of public health advisories has caused anxiety in many citizens who may deem tourism activities too risky during the pandemic.

The pandemic hit nearly two years ago, and since then, Canadians’ fear of travel has been a constant theme. Tuning into daily COVID-19 briefings likely contributed to this heightened sense of fear.

In March 2020, the federal government issued a blanket travel warning, which was only lifted on Oct. 22, 2021. As recently as May 2021, Ontario Premier Doug Ford blamed travel and borders for a rise in cases when evidence pointed to there being other causes for case increases like lack of proper PPE, community spread, overcrowded housing and poverty.

The “problem frame” here is how certain messages shared during the pandemic have helped maintain a fear of travel over time.

As researchers whose work looks at travel and tourism, we were curious about the impact of COVID-19 briefings and the way media reported them on the industry. We think it’s time to put fear into perspective for the traveller.

Discourses of blame and shame

An analysis — published as part of the Travelling Towards Tomorrow Together: Travel and Tourism Research Association Canada conference — of Canadian online news, noted how the media has perpetuated a fear of travel through narratives that emphasize safety, mistrust and guilt.

Reading, listening and watching the news has caused anxiety in many citizens who deem tourism activities too risky during the pandemic.

Some news outlets reported on inconsistent health-related messaging and the dangers of travel, while others reported on an industry-sponsored study that showed there was little flying risk if preventative measures were in place. This caused confusion.

These varying messages and subsequent reporting aren’t a total surprise. Especially considering how at the start of the pandemic, we faced an unknown virus, with minimal knowledge. Tests, treatments and prevention strategies have evolved, but different phases of the pandemic — and health-related messaging and media coverage — highlight how risk changed and evolved over time.

Regardless, media coverage of changing government travel restrictions and differing health and safety guidelines — like masking — exacerbated a discourse of mistrust in media and in government officials.

How Canadians feel about travel

An April 2021 survey found that 82 per cent of Canadians perceived taking a vacation as a large or moderate risk.

Feelings of guilt and travel shaming influenced how Canadians felt about travelling — many likely thought they will be judged for putting others at risk.

Politicians shamed Canadians who chose to travel whether it was early in the pandemic (before any travel restrictions were in place), or later when tourism-related businesses advertised cheap domestic flights and trips.

When the government banned flights to “sun destinations” in January 2021, many Canadians took it to heart and stayed home. Just four months later, messaging from the travel and tourism sector surfaced about it being up to Canadians to save summer tourism.

After the Canadian government lifted global travel restrictions on non-essential travel with no press release, the media reported on the problem frame.

Stories highlighted how “mindful” Canadians should be when travelling south and some shared messages from epidemiologists that we should keep our foot on the brake of travel to keep incident rates low, while others focused on Canadians return to travel helping struggling Caribbean islands.

The Canadian Travel and Tourism Roundtable — a group of Canadian tourism and travel businesses hoping to “reopen the economy” — recently called on the government to remove “non-science-based obstacles to international travel, such as expensive pre-departure PCR tests for fully vaccinated travellers, that disproportionately impact average Canadian families.”

Perceived risk

There are nuances to how different cultures perceive travel risk. Canadians normally find travel less risky than Americans and Australians. However, a recent study about post-pandemic travel showed that Canadians were more cautious to travel than their American or European counterparts.

A columnist in the Toronto Sun, called Canadians out for being “unjustifiably afraid” of travel. Travelling and flying always present a risk, but that risk is low if mitigation measures and infection prevention are observed.

It’s important to note however, that after Alberta lifted its restrictions they faced a devastating surge in cases.

Canadians are among the most hesitant when considering an international leisure trip, according to a survey conducted by TCI Research. The majority of them (81 per cent) have also paid close attention to media during the pandemic says an Ipsos survey — actively seeking risk information which influences their perception and knowledge.

Managing travel risk and media messages

Canadians perceive travel risk subjectively and reduce risk by remaining cautious and choosing not to travel.

A resident sentiment study by Destination Canada shows that in recent months, feelings of safety have decreased or remained unchanged across five Canadian provinces.

But now that the vast majority of Canadians are vaccinated, and many tourism businesses and destinations have implemented careful safety protocols for travellers, those feelings of safety should change.

It is time for Canadians to mitigate travel risks by adopting objective risk management strategies.

The risk of getting COVID-19 will not be zero, it will likely never be zero. People must continue to assess risk based on science, wear masks in public and pay attention in crowded areas. When vaccinated, Canadians should feel more comfortable travelling because travel professionals are working to keep us safe, there is life after vaccination.

Despite it being important to respect countries’ travel advisories to prevent the spread of COVID-19, avoiding leisure travel for the past 18 months has led to a significant impact on our mental well-being and a loss of jobs across the tourism industry.

Now that restrictions are lifting and leisure travel is resuming, we need to be reminded that travel has positive effects on our health and wellness.

Written by Sarah Elton, Ryerson University. Photo credit: Sarah Elton, Author provided. Originally published in The Conversation.

Plants are more than background foliage in our busy lives. Our relationship with plants supports human health and well-being in many ways.

During the height of the pandemic, people flocked to the park near my home. For those of us who live in neighbourhoods where there is access to greenspace, parks allowed us to lounge on the grass and in the shade of the trees, admire flowers, enjoy a walk in the fresh air, or even grow food in a community garden.

These moments offered a health boost and made visible just one of the ways that human health and well-being is supported by our relationships with plants. It’s part of what I call relational health — a term that speaks to the ways health is produced through relationships. From a relational health perspective, health is a constantly unfolding process that is produced by encounters between humans and various aspects of non-human nature.

Sometimes the encounters are not good — we only need to think of emerging infectious diseases to be reminded of this. But mostly, interactions between humans and non-human nature are positive, health-producing and sustaining. Our relationships with plants offer a good example.

Plant blindness

Euro-western culture largely ignores the many roles that plants play in society. It’s been called “plant blindness,” an “inability to see or notice plants in one’s environment.” Plants are not much more than background foliage in our busy lives — or worse, expendable.

At the local level, trees are killed as homeowners renovate and infrastructure expands. At the global level, we demonstrate an ignorance of the health-supporting role of plants when we accept, in the name of development, the destruction of forests for palm oil plantations or the paving of wetlands, where all sorts of plants flourish.

The lack of awareness of the role of plants in supporting human health is particularly striking if you consider that plants produce oxygen. We can’t breathe without them. They clean our water, they provide us with food and medicine, fibre for our clothes, material for our homes.

The roles of plants

Botanists and ecologists study the natural science of plants. As social scientists, my colleagues and I consider the various roles that plants play in our social and political worlds.

Plants can be considered to be social participants and players in society. So I look at the ways that plants support our health, not only in terms of the food they provide us or the oxygen and shade they offer, but the ways that our relationships with plants facilitate political decisions and actions that support health in the city.

That non-human nature is part of society is foreign to Euro-western thought. Ever since the Enlightenment, the dominant Euro-western worldview has seen the human as the supreme species, leaving the rest of the world as resources to exploit, as writer and philosopher Silvia Wynter explores in her work.

To view a plant as a participant requires a shift in worldview, for some. Indigenous ontologies have understood and valued the contributions of non-humans to world-making. People in other parts of the world, including on the Indian subcontinent, understand that humans are not the only actors on planet earth. Also, the knowledge that health is produced through relationships between humans and non-human nature has long been part of Indigenous ways of knowing. It’s only in Euro-western society that has ignored and tried to erase other worldviews.

Plants as social participants

So what does it look like when plants are social participants? Plants are evidently not like us — they don’t act with intent. Rather, their agency as health actors emerges from relationships.

I conducted fieldwork in the Regent Park neighbourhood of Toronto that is being redeveloped from a social housing community to a mixed-income area. The redevelopment has involved building on land where residents have grown food for decades. Locals did not want to lose their growing space, so they advocated for gardens in the new neighbourhood. They wanted continued access to homegrown vegetables, and the mental peace and exercise that gardening provided them. They didn’t want to lose their relationships with plants.

Very simply, the relationships between people and plants facilitated the advocacy, and residents were able to secure at least some space for gardens in the new design.

At first glance, it might look like humans did the advocacy. They are the ones who spoke up and asked that plants be included in the design. But if you recognize the agency of non-human nature, it shifts the analysis.

If you consider plants as participants in society, then the plants’ agency in the advocacy becomes visible. Their agency arises from the relationships they have with humans. When their needs are considered by humans in decision-making, they play a role. The plants partner with the people and their physical presence in gardens stakes a claim to the land. This shift in worldview opens up many possibilities in better understanding the role of non-human nature in contemporary society.

This scenario also sheds light on how health is produced through relationships between humans and non-human nature in the city. Health is not something that one possesses in one’s body, but rather for the gardeners who depend on the garden for food and well-being, health is produced in part by their relationships with the plants in their gardens.

To promote human health during this time of climate change and global pandemic requires scrutiny of the relationships we have with non-human nature in ways that may not be familiar to the Euro-western worldview.

Written by Sibo Chen, Ryerson University. Photo credit: Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press. Originally published in The Conversation.

An anti-vaccination protester holds an upside down Canadian flag during a demonstration outside the venue of a Liberal Party election campaign event, in Newmarket, Ont.

Vaccine passports have become a major point of contention in the 2021 federal election.

Currently, more than 73 per cent of Canada’s population have received at least one dose of vaccine, and the country’s response to COVID-19 continues to be a top priority for voters. This is likely why current public health efforts have concentrated on expanding vaccine access and implementing communication strategies (like motivational interviewing) to increase vaccination rates.

But, as seen through recent anti-vax protests, especially those targeting schools and hospitals, there is a worrisome convergence of the anti-vaccine movement and far-right political extremism.

And on the frontline of these anti-vax protests are people occupied by extreme rage who are threatening to exert violence against whoever they deem as “outsiders” and “traitors.”

For decades, vaccine hesitancy has been a subject of intense study in the field of scientific communication. The issue’s recent radicalization makes insights about its root causes even more important.

Factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy

A distinction must be drawn between vaccine hesitancy and the current anti-vax movement, as the latter’s agenda has been hijacked by far-right groups.

Previous study has identified a variety of factors contributing to people’s vaccination hesitancy, such as community trauma, scientific scepticism and political beliefs. Some Indigenous communities’ concerns about COVID-19 vaccines, for instance, come from instances of medical experimentation.

Meanwhile, errors made during pro-vaccine communications may raise additional concerns about vaccination safety and efficacy. Consider the public uncertainty and outrage over the National Advisory Committee on Immunization’s contradictory messages regarding AstraZeneca.

Research on vaccine hesitancy around the world has demonstrated that a number of contributing factors to vaccine hesitation are directly linked to a persistent decline in public trust in institutions and government policy. In recent years, this trend, along with escalating political polarization, has shaped the anti-vaccine movement into its current form.

Prior to the pandemic, researchers noted that social media platforms, like Facebook, facilitate anti-vaccine messages and conspiracy theories by enabling the diffusion of misinformation like “pesticides caused clinical symptoms of polio.” Fast forwarding to 2020, major anti-vaccine groups on Facebook launched anti-vaccine misinformation campaigns weeks before the U.S. government launched its vaccine development program, sewing seeds of doubt and subsequently hampering the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines across the country.

The radicalization of the anti-vaccine movement

Since the start of mass COVID-19 vaccinations in early 2020, the public health sector has been closely monitoring an unusually high level of resistance among a small section of the population. Unlike prior vaccination hesitancy, the current anti-vax movement cannot be explained by a lack of information or illogical thinking, especially in light of the significant press coverage and public health initiatives over the last several months.

Scholars have resorted to the solution aversion model to account for the growing political division around vaccination. According to this model, individuals with divergent political ideologies perceive social issues differently because of their inherent aversion to specific solutions. In the case of vaccine passports, its implementation depends on stringent government regulations, which are deeply unpopular among many far-right individuals.

Additionally, our fragmented media environment further fosters solution aversion by promoting motivated reasoning. With today’s media audiences being trapped in algorithm-based digital echo chambers, it is increasingly typical for individuals to interact exclusively with like-minded media sources and other internet users, resulting in biased information absorption.

Fixing the broken public sphere

Admittedly, reconciling the divided public opinions on COVID-19 vaccination policies is not a simple task. As long as social media platforms continue to not bat an eye at misinformation out of concern for their click-through rates, and governments continue to ignore structural injustices driving political radicalization, it is unlikely that vaccine resistance will be reduced without increasing polarization.

The anti-vax movement, like many other issues that have emerged during the pandemic, serves as a stark reminder that our society’s public sphere is fundamentally broken. The long yet essential process of fixing it will require all of us, as responsible citizens and media users, to work collaboratively on restoring public conversation mechanisms.

Written by Nicole W. Forrester, Ryerson University. Photo credit: AP Photo/Gregory Bull. Originally published in The Conversation.

Simone Biles’ sponsors, including Athleta and Visa, are lauding her decision to put her mental health first and withdraw from the gymnastics team competition during the Olympics. It’s the latest example of sponsors praising athletes who are increasingly open about mental health issues.

The Tokyo Olympics will go down in history for many reasons. It was the first Olympics to be postponed, the first to be held in the midst of a pandemic and the first to be held without spectators.

But these Olympics will also be remembered for another first — the public airing of mental health challenges by two of the world’s biggest sports superstars, gymnast Simone Biles and tennis player Naomi Osaka.

The Tokyo Olympics are not the first Games to face unique challenges.

Midway through the 1972 Olympics in Munich, the athletes’ village was taken over by terrorists, resulting in 11 Israeli athletes being killed. Remarkably, after suspending the Games for only 24 hours, athletes returned to competition.

At the 1994 Atlanta Olympics, a pipe bomb was detonated at the Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring 111 others.

And much like the Tokyo Olympics, the 1920 Antwerp Games were held on the heels of the influenza pandemic.

When athletes rise to the occasion under difficult conditions, we say they are mentally tough — and we applaud them. But if they should fail to deliver an expected performance, we assume they have choked.

And yet, as we’ve seen with Biles and Osaka — two athletes who are the best in the world in their respective sports — none of us watching the Olympics can ever truly know what other additional or personal problems an athlete may be facing.

It’s easy for athletes to perceive a greater burden to perform, to struggle with distinguishing their identity from their performances and, for a favoured athlete like Biles or Osaka, to feel the weight of the world on their shoulders.

In fact, few athletes can return to the Olympic Games and win again after winning in the previous Games.

In 1993, researchers interviewed world champion athletes and found that success resulted in greater demands for athletes, compromising future high-level performances unless they were able to control both the expectations they placed on themselves and the expectations of external demands like media, sponsors and public appearances.

One of the many things that makes the Tokyo Olympics a unique Games is the absence of crowds. For some athletes, the presence of a crowd can help them get into an optimal performance state.

When I was competing for Canada in the high jump, I drew a lot of energy off the crowd — and consequently had better performances in a packed stadium. But if there were few fans in the stands, I had to really work on my mental game to perform well.

Other athletes, however, prefer the absence of a crowd because they can improve focus and keep their arousal level under control.

Mental health and mental performance

The demands on athletes at these Games have sparked a lot of discussions about mental health, but not so much about mental performance.

According to the World Health Organization, mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” The mental health continuum can span from being mentally healthy, to daily mental distresses, to mental health problems or mental illnesses.

We all experience daily mental distresses like failing at our jobs, pressures from school work or having a disagreement with someone close to us. When faced with these challenges, we are generally able to cope and adjust, and eventually return ourselves to a state of good mental health.

Mental health problem are moments in life when we are faced with substantial challenges that are difficult to manage — the loss of a loved one, a sexual assault or a divorce. These can be prolonged, but they are not a mental disorder. A mental illness is a clinically diagnosed mental disorder like depression or bipolar disorder, resulting in distress or problems with functioning.

Mental performance is concerned with the psychology of sport performance, whereby optimal performance and the well-being of athletes are addressed using mental skills training.

Dealing with the terminal illness of his coach, Pete Sampras fights back tears at the 1995 Australian Open.

Sport psychology is integral

The ultimate goal of mental skills training is self-regulation, meaning athletes understand the conditions that they perform at their best, the conditions where they don’t and how they are able to adapt and adjust themselves to be in a state for optimal performance.

Research has shown that when an individual’s self-esteem is threatened and they experience emotional distress, self-regulation and coping efforts can fail.

Mental skills training helps athletes effectively cope and return to a state of mental health quickly when they’re in mental distress. Athletes proficient in self-regulation can adapt and adjust themselves mentally when they are not in their desired mental state to still deliver a great performance.

Many athletes and coaches will work with a registered mental performance consultant to develop these mental skills. But only over the last two decades, as sport began to really embrace mental training as an integral component in an integrated support team, has this practice become popular.

The problem with mental performance is that it is intangible. It’s easy to see physical improvements, like with strength training, but it’s much more difficult to see improvements in confidence or mental resilience.

While most athletes and coaches do acknowledge sport psychology as critical to performance, it often receives the least amount of attention in training. Mental skills have been found to be a defining factor that distinguishes successful Olympians from less successful Olympians.

Starting a conversation

When athletes perform under pressure and deliver incredible performances, they are lauded as being mentally tough. However, if they struggle or choke under pressure, they may be called mentally weak.

While we tend to be more accepting of someone battling mental health issues, we are less accepting of athletes battling mental performance issues. Both should be accepted and supported, as the Tokyo Games are illustrating.

Biles and Osaka have demonstrated to the world that only the athlete ever truly knows what is going on and only they are capable of making decisions that serves their best interests. Biles and Osaka have also assisted in encouraging discussions of mental health and mental performance.

While mental performance and mental health are not necessarily mutually exclusive, struggling with a mental performance does not automatically mean an athlete is having a mental health problem. It also doesn’t mean an athlete is mentally weak.

But one takeaway from these Olympics should be the importance of sport psychology. Psychologist Abraham Maslow, the father of self-actualization, estimated less than one per cent of the adult population would ever realize their full potential.

As we explore the human potential in sport, it’s time to realize that mental training is just as important as physical training to achieve incredible performances.