Wishes and resolutions for our collective health

The year 2022 is coming to an end, and the time for revisions and traditional decisions is approaching. Almost one in three people In Canada you’ll make at least one New Year’s resolution that focuses mostly on health: exercise more, lose weight, eat better, and take a break. When we know that hospitals are overwhelmed, that staff are overwhelmed and that we struggle even to take care of children, we have to acknowledge the importance of starting the new year by adopting behaviors that will keep us healthy.

The real challenge is not in making good decisions, but in maintaining them. So, after six months, Two out of five people Only you will always stick to it. Obviously, when we look at the high and increasing prevalence of chronic diseases in society, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, we will benefit, as a society, from finding ways to make it easier to maintain these good decisions!

The Center for Sustainable Health Research VITAM wants to help solve this dilemma by proposing concrete solutions to improve the health and well-being of populations by publishing new strategies that target our individual behaviors as well as our living and environmental environments. A huge paradigm shift challenge: 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 conducted at VITAM is conducted in partnership 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 major challenges we face if it only focuses on reorganizing care and social services. Managing the room elephant, a chronic social disease, will require embedding the science of prevention and assessing its impact.

Even with the best intentions, adopting a healthy lifestyle can be as difficult as swimming against the tide. The survival of the health system depends on having access to tools and prevention that will enable us to live healthy lives for a long time. Local governments will have to work with health and social service providers, public health authorities and all relevant ministries to create a socioeconomic model and healthy living environments. This cross-sectoral approach is ambitious but necessary.

Let’s make sustainable health our collective resolution for 2023 and let’s 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