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Community Leadership
Community Understanding
Poverty Reduction
Housing
Early Child Health & Development
Food Security
Building Health Equity
Health Promotion and Community Leadership
There are many ways of looking at community leadership. In the Health Promotion Department, we are interested in leadership at the individual, group and community levels.
At the individual level a 'community leader' is person who is perceived by others, inside the community and externally, as someone who legitimately represents a community. This community can be place based (such as a neighbourhood, or small town), or a community of common interests, purpose or practice.
Community leaders may or may not be elected to their positions, and usually have no legal powers. They are often called upon by the media and local organizations to provide some information about the general feeling within a particular community, and may act as a connector between that community and other organizations.
At the group and community levels, the Health Promotion Department invests in strengthening community leadership and in helping to grow new and emerging leaders. who are connected to local organizing efforts. Broader community leadership takes into account how a group effort involves active participation of members, and where the group effort is able to achieve some redistribution of resources or decision making favourable to the community or group. 1
The Saskatoon Mothers’ Centre Coalition and the Saskatoon Anti-Poverty Coalition are two of the local groups that receive some staffing and financial support from the Health Promotion Department. The Health Promotion Department, in collaboration with local groups is developing a tool that can be used by groups to assess their broader group leadership skills. This takes into account nine dimensions of organizational capacity including: citizen participation, leadership, skills, resources, social and interorganizational networks, sense of community, understanding of community history, community power, community values and critical reflection.
Community Understanding
Learning About Poverty: A Resource Package for Faith Communities
This information package contains a concise set of resources to aid you and your congregation in learning about poverty, as well as how everyone can be active in reducing this ailment in our community. The material in this package is intended for you to use as you wish. You may wish to use the information in the format it is provided, or extract pieces of it to better fit your needs. You may also wish to create your own teaching tools based on the information provided here. We would be happy to help you develop or expand any poverty reduction ideas or activities you have.
Health Equity Gauge
Health Equity is the condition where everyone could attain their full health potential and are not disadvantaged due to their social position or other socially determined circumstances.
An equity gauge, as it is used internationally, consists of three pillars: assessment and monitoring, advocacy and dissemination, and community engagement. It attempts to bring together data collection with coordinated community-driven actions and advocacy efforts to reduce inequities.
Assessment and Monitoring
to analyse, understand, measure,
and document inequities
Advocacy and Dissemination Community Engagement
to provoke dialogue and to engage the most vulnerable
promote changes in policy, in our communities as active
programs, and planning participants in change
The Health Promotion Department plans to develop an equity gauge to use as an active approach to measuring and monitoring inequities in health and triggering actions to reduce these. An analogy would be that it acts as a thermostat. A thermostat takes the measurement and when the temperature is outside of pre-determined parameters, the thermostat triggers a feedback loop — a set of actions to change the temperature to be within the desired parameters.
While some health inequalities are inevitable and acceptable (for example, elderly people generally have poorer health than young adults), many health inequalities are avoidable and unjust (for example, lower rates of immunization coverage among girls than among boys, or higher mortality rates among some racial/ethnic groups compared to others). Equity Gauges are concerned with health-related inequalities that are unfair.
The Health Equity Gauge is intended to be used by those developing, implementing and/or evaluating policies or programs to better understand how the benefit from the policy or program is distributed, how the policy or program is narrowing the gap, and/or how it is not widening the gap.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the Health Equity Gauge, please feel free to connect the Health Promotion Department at 655-4601 .
Poverty Reduction
This section awaiting content.
Housing
Housing is a social determinant of health. The World Health Organization defines social determinants of health as “the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system… [and are] mostly responsible for health inequities – the unfair and unavoidable differences in health status (World Health Organization, 2011). This means that people that are homeless, have unsafe, unaffordable or insecure housing have an increased risk of health problems. (Social Determinants of Health: The Canadian Facts, 2010) For more information on how where you live affects health watch this clip from Place Matters, Episode 5 from the series Unnatural Causes.
In Saskatoon, the price of housing has increased while the affordability of housing has decreased. The cost of rental housing has also increased and vacancy rates are very low. (The Saskatoon Housing and Homelessness Plan, 2011-2014) Housing is considered affordable if the cost is less than 30% of gross income. Using this formula, a household needs $37, 440 ($19.50/hour) to afford the average rent of $936 in Saskatoon (Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation). Many people cannot find safe, affordable rental housing. Those that are living in unaffordable housing end up living paycheque to paycheque. They often have to decide between paying rent and other necessities, such as buying groceries.
In 2008, the Community-University Institute for Social Research (CUISR) conducted a homeless count in Saskatoon. This count provides a one day snap shot of homelessness. This count found that 260 people were homeless (228 adults and 32 children) on that day. This number is thought to be a conservative estimate. The actual number of homeless people in Saskatoon is likely closer to 1000. (CUISR, 2008)
Housing security is a continuum, ranging from absolute homelessness to emergency shelters, subsidized housing, affordable housing and home ownership. It costs society more to provide emergency measures to address housing issues, such as shelters, than to provide more stable housing. (Health Disparity in Saskatoon: Analysis to Intervention, 2008)
In Saskatoon there are many organizations working on addressing the issues of inadequate housing and homelessness. Here are some links to more information on housing in Saskatoon (this list is not inclusive of every resource in Saskatoon):
Plans and Strategies:
Organizations:
Research Reports:
Early Child Health and Development
This section awaiting content.
Food Security
This section awaiting content.
Building Health Equity
This section awaiting content.
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