Poverty by Postal Code

Here is a map of obesity rates of adults in Canada from researchers at UBC:

Estimated prevalence of obesity in Canadian adults by province (2000-2011).

Technically, this is a map of rates of obesity. The darker the shade, the higher the percentage of people with obesity within that province. The highest obesity rates, as a trend, increase towards the north and east coasts of the country.

When I first came across this map, my health studies student brain thought why? Part of me looked at the trend and noticed that some of the provinces that experience obesity at higher levels are also the provinces I know to have a greater population of Aboriginal peoples. Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Yukon, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are provinces that have higher than 15% (Nunavut being the highest at 85%) percentage Indian, Metis and/or Inuit identifying residents.

Obesity is a health status indicator that I know has many links within the social determinants of health web. It is a complex manifestation of poverty and decreased health. In another sleuth move I searched for poverty rates by province in an effort to prove causality or at least correlation. What I found was this Global News article mapping income with Canada's postal code system. Though it cannot explain every province and its respective obesity rates, helps to illuminate the issue of income disparity. Newfoundland, Manitoba and major urban centres such as Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto illustrate this fantastically. This article also gives support to my hypothesis about the poverty and obesity rates among Aboriginal peoples in Canada; the poorest postal code in all of Canada, as determined by this study, is in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. This postal code belongs to the Eskasoni Mi'Kmaw Nation, a reserve that is the largest in area and population in Nova Scotia. 

Without going in a whole new direction and making this post a thesis topic, I wanted to highlight the interaction between poverty, geography, cultural heritage and health status. As we have learned in this program since first year, and has been emphasized through particularly Week 9 of Global Health Promotion, health issues do not exist in a vacuum. Obesity is a complex health condition that effects many Canadians now at rates higher than ever seen before. Although it is unlikely to happen due to public discourse (see previous posts) and government responsibility, I believe obesity needs to be looked at as a health condition of poverty similar to malnutrition. 

The socio-ecological model can explain this to an extent and through research I found the following graphic to illustrate: 

Socioecological view of Obesity

With all of these factors combined, and the added stress of colonialism embedded in Canadian social norms and the dismissal of traditional Aboriginal cultural values, one can see how amplified the effects are in Aboriginal communities. I recognize that this is a hugely complex issue, however I wanted to bring it to the table and open it up for discussion as a linkage of several Global Health Promotion concepts in one discussion. 

Additionally, given the technology, I think it would be very beneficial to transpose these maps on each other and observe obesity rates by postal code to compare as well.

Works Cited:

Adult obesity rates at historic high, UBC study says. (2013, February 28). CTV News. Retrieved from http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/adult-obesity-rates-at-historic-high-ubc-study-says1.1174630#ixzz2Q2yPOBXp


Cain, P. (2013, March 19). Income by postal code: Mapping Canada's richest and poorest neighbourhoods. Global News. Retrieved from http://globalnews.ca/news/370804/income-by-postal-code/

Jeanne H. Freeland-Graves, Susan Nitzke, Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Total Diet Approach to Healthy Eating, Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Volume 113, Issue 2, February 2013, Pages 307-317, ISSN 2212-2672, 10.1016/j.jand.2012.12.013.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212267212019934)

Where do we go from here?

"Well, if you just work harder, you can get out"

After re-watching the TED Talk by Jacqueline Novogratz on poverty featured in Week 9, I decided to explore the realms of Youtube and see what really I could find on peoples' ideas of poverty, and even perhaps, some extreme examples of poverty. 

As a fairly competent Youtube navigator, I found myself watching a video produced by Poverty Resolutions which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the eradication of dollar-a-day poverty. It was founded by two American brothers Matt and Andrew, when they and two friends made the commitment to live on a dollar a day each for food and water in Port-au-Prince following the events of the 2010 earthquake shaking Haiti and crushing the capital.

The film itself, twenty-eight minutes in length, is a well put together documentary about the culture shock, living conditions and realizations fuelled in these four twenty-something men while living amongst the hardworking Haitians rocked by the natural disaster. While watching, the major 'GHP' (Global-Health-Promotion) moment, as I like the call it, came at 15:05. The men are commenting on how difficult it is to live in the rainy, humid, hot and under-developed conditions of Port-au-Prince after another night of downpour. At 15:55, Matt makes the comment that in the past, his thinking was always that people in developing countries can make a better life for themselves and get out of the situations they are in just by working hard. After his experience in Port-au-Prince, watching how hard the Haitians work and in the conditions that are all too common in developing countries, he begins to doubt that philosophy.

To me this is a prime example of a paradigm shift from a Behavioural-dominant perspective of health promotion to a Socio-political view. Matt clearly sees the validity in health promotion from a Socio-political level after recognizing that the behaviour or work ethic of the individuals in Haiti was not enough to pull them out of the situations they found themselves in post-earthquake. 

From this experience, the brothers have worked to spread awareness of the causes and consequences of poverty. They do mention in their mission statement that they aim to "empower individuals to meet the needs of their communities", however I believe that this is likely a statement directed toward those who are disproportionately favoured by socio-political factors at play. 

What I was left thinking after watching this video was if experiences and first hand interaction in impoverished contexts are what single-handedly changed the perspectives of these young men, what differences do internships, volunteer and mission trips have on the individual as well as the community visited? Maybe this could be a tip off to organizations or money-holders/change-directors that providing an methods of reflection and resources for impact and engagement beyond the experience itself can be a way for everyday people to make a difference and to act on their own volition in providing remedies to poverty.