The year 2022 is drawing to a close and the time for traditional reviews and resolutions is coming. Almost one in three people in Canada will make at least one New Year’s resolution that will focus primarily on health: exercise more, lose weight, eat better and take time to rest. When we know that hospitals are overcrowded, staff are exhausted, and we struggle to even care for children, we have to recognize the importance of starting the new year by adopting behaviors that keep us healthy.
The real challenge is not making good resolutions, but keeping them. So, after six months, two out of five people only he will always adhere to it. Of course, as we look at the high and growing prevalence of chronic diseases in society, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, we as a society would benefit from finding ways to make it easier to keep these good resolutions!
The VITAM sustainable health research center wishes to help resolve this impasse by proposing concrete solutions to improve the health and well-being of the population by implementing new strategies targeted at our individual behaviors, as well as our living environments and environments. Huge challenge involving a paradigm shift: moving from legitimate disease management to health promotion.
The concept of sustainable health can be explained simply: a healthy mind in a healthy body, in a healthy environment and living environment, on a healthy planet. The research carried out at VITAM is carried out in collaboration with citizens and addresses ways to make our society more compatible with human, animal and planetary health in the long term.
The health system reform announced for 2023 will not be able to address the great challenges we face if it focuses exclusively on the reorganization of social care and services. Managing the elephant in the room that is a chronic social disease will require including the science of prevention and assessing its impact.
Even with the best of intentions, adopting a healthy lifestyle can be as difficult as swimming against the current. The survival of the healthcare system depends on access to tools and means of prevention that will allow us to live a healthy life for a long time. Local governments will have to collaborate with health and social service providers, public health authorities and all relevant ministries to create a socio-economic model and living environments compatible with health. This cross-sectoral approach is ambitious, but essential.
Let’s make sustainable health our collective resolution for 2023 and build a healthy Quebec together, for generations to come.
And Happy New Year 2023!
Jean-Pierre Despres
Scientific Director, VITAM – Center for Sustainable Health Research
