SPARK Conversations

Send us Fan Mail Season 4, Episode 5 | Episode released on February 26, 2024 Description: Right-sized children’s healthcare systems provide timely access to integrated healthcare services and require a stable supply of sufficient numbers of appropriately skilled health human resources (HHR). HHR shortages have been long-standing and were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. They have produced lon...

Send us Fan Mail Tune in to our first-ever live SPARK: Conversations podcast; recorded live at Children’s Healthcare Canada’s 2023 Annual Conference.   In this compelling episode, healthcare leaders, Drs. JC Cowden and Nel Weiman, join host Dr. Katharine Smart to unravel the intricate health equity landscape. Drawing from their extensive experiences, the trio explores tangible strategies, real-lif...

Send us Fan Mail In this podcast, Dr. Javeed Sukhera discusses child and youth mental health, emphasizing the challenges faced in accessing timely and appropriate mental health services in both Canada and the United States. He highlights the underfunding of mental health services, the need for a collaborative approach, and the importance of trauma-informed care. Dr. Sukhera also touches on the dif...

Send us Fan Mail This podcast features an insightful conversation with Dr. Justine Cohen-Silver, a pediatrician who is making a significant impact in children’s health and healthcare through an innovative school-based program that addresses the social determinants of health. The Model Schools Pediatric Health Initiative (MSPHI) at Unity Health Toronto aims to improve health outcomes for children i...

Send us Fan Mail In this podcast, Dr. Katie Birnie discusses pediatric pain management, focusing on the newly developed National Pediatric Pain Management Standard , the first of its kind in the world. A collaboration between Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP) and the Health Standards Organization, the new standard establishes a set of guidelines for the delivery of pain management for children fro...

Send us Fan Mail Description:   Health systems serving children and youth face numerous challenges and complexities. At the intersection of these challenges, health leaders recognize that the answers are not simple and they must be effective in seeing beyond these complexities and leveraging connections that will help them to intentionally drive their system. As health care becomes more integrated...

Send us Fan Mail Description:  The news media shapes our collective mindsets about key issues and what needs to be done to address them. The unprecedented viral surge in the demand of young patients seeking emergency medical care faced by hospitals and healthcare systems serving children and youth across Canada highlighted the immense amount of pressure placed on the pediatric health system. Addit...

Send us Fan Mail In a recent op-ed published in the Ottawa Business Journal, Dr. Jason Berman spoke about the importance of research innovation and cross-industry collaborations in tackling today’s healthcare crisis. “To improve healthcare meaningfully, we need the business community, the hospital community and the academic community to break down traditional silos and press fast-forward on promis...

Send us Fan Mail Description : January’s SPARK: Conversations monthly podcast is on Indigenous child health with our podcast host, Dr. Katharine Smart in conversation with special guest, Dr. Cindy Blackstock. As an internationally recognized First Nations scholar and child welfare expert, Cindy has been the driving force behind promoting reconciliation to ensure culturally based equity for First N...

Send us Fan Mail December’s SPARK: Conversations monthly podcast is on health systems transformation with our podcast host, Dr. Katharine Smart in conversation with special guest, Helen Bevan. Helen is a Strategic Advisor and leader of large scale change within the National Health Service (NHS) in England, the largest public healthcare system in the world. Helen will be discussing her experiences...

Send us Fan Mail October’s SPARK: Conversations monthly podcast is on child health in the community with our new podcast host, Dr. Katharine Smart in conversation with special guest, Alison Quigley. Alison is the Senior Vice-President, Patient Care Services & Master Plan Clinical Lead at Trillium Health Partners. Alison will be discussing her experiences at Trillium Health Partners, systems co...

Send us Fan Mail Description:  The Canadian healthcare system is currently unable to meet the demands of the people who need it. Children and adults alike are seeing extended wait times for emergency rooms, ambulances and surgeries as well as closures of essential rural emergency centers due to staffing shortages. Dr. Katharine Smart, the current president of the Canadian Medical Association, has...

Send us Fan Mail Description:  COVID served as a catalyst for the spread and uptake of mis- and disinformation, threatening the trust Canadian citizens have in vaccines and, frankly, putting lives at risk. Further, the extra disease burden on the healthcare system exacerbated pre-existing problems, including in the area of health human resources (e.g., staff burnout and shortages). Some may ask, S...

Send us Fan Mail Infancy is a developmental period when children are most vulnerable and when they present with the greatest potential. Infant and early mental health (IEMH) involves the social, emotional, cognitive wellbeing of infants and young children. IEMH care aims to ensure every child has the best possible start in life. Research tells us that: Infant and early child development sets the s...

Send us Fan Mail The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons, including best practices for immunizing populations efficiently. To retain what we have learned, and continue to improve vaccine confidence and uptake, the Canadian population will rely on experts like Dr. Manish Sadarangani to lead robust infectious disease and prevention research. On this episode of SPARK: Conversations,...

Send us Fan Mail Guest: Susa Benseler, MD, PhD; Director, Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute at the Cumming School of Medicine; Strategy Lead, Child Health and Wellness Research Strategy; Husky Energy Chair in Child and Maternal Health; Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation Chair in Paediatric Research; University of Calgary Children’s Healthcare Canada’s strategic priorities include...

Send us Fan Mail Children and their family members have unmatched, dyadic impacts on each other’s health. This is especially prominent in children and families that, due to unfortunate circumstances, are frequently connected with hospitals, researchers, and health systems. As such, it is imperative that we engage families in healthcare processes, and recognize their stories, experiences, and input...

Send us Fan Mail Misinformation and even disinformation are not new concepts in science. This has been evident during the COVID-19 pandemic while the world has monitored, shared, and re-shared information on the spread of the virus, public health restrictions, and immunization. Recently, the COVID-19 discussion has become even more emotionally charged with a vaccine available for some children in...

Send us Fan Mail While COVID-19 has resulted in a global health crisis with considerable negative health impacts affecting children and youth, climate change has been an evolving and escalating global threat to child health for even longer. The global mean temperature warming is escalating and will have lasting momentum for centuries to millennia. However, immediate action can mitigate future warm...

Send us Fan Mail This podcast focuses on patient partnership for child health research, practice,  and systems. Listen in as Dr. Katie Birnie shares her perspective on patient partnership and Partnering for Pain, an award-winning research program which she leads and which integrates patient and family partnership and multi-stakeholder engagement to improve the prevention, assessment, and managemen...

Send us Fan Mail Health inequities are “unfair, avoidable, and remediable differences in health status between countries and between different groups of people within the same country” ( WHO, 2013 , p 3).  COVID has revealed inequities that many in healthcare, some more than others, already knew existed. We’ve noted differences in who is exposed to and infected by COVID, who ends up in hospital or...

Send us Fan Mail Due to its federated nature, Canada does not have a national structure for the governance of child health or health care. Joined up governance (or a ‘whole of government’ approach) has been touted as an important tool in tackling “wicked” problems in children’s health and healthcare, which involves multiple ministries responsible for health, social services, and the social determi...

Send us Fan Mail COVID vaccines have been approved in Canada for youth and adults 12 and older. The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI, 2021) recommends that (with very few exceptions) that a complete series with a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine should be offered to individuals 12 to 18 years of age. While Pfizer recently announced a COVID vaccine trial involving children aged 6 m...

Send us Fan Mail When children, youth, and their families visit a children's hospital of the future,  what will have changed in their experiences of care, their health outcomes, and community health? What will it be like to work there? How will the hospital serve its community? How will it adapt to changing demographics, emerging technology, a focus on care delivered closer to (or even in) ho...

Send us Fan Mail During this episode we learn of a decades-long journey to bring a children’s hospital to a province that had none - but the story is about so much more than building a hospital. It is about Canadian health system improvement for children and families. It involves: Developing and maintaining partnerships with like-minded organizations locally and across the country Engagement with...