How do you safeguard Canada’s public health in an era of unprecedented upheaval — from the growth of health misinformation and conspiracy theories to advice from Dr. Google and looming pandemics? That is the role of Canada’s new chief public health officer, Dr. Joss Reimer — a physician from Manitoba and former president of the Canadian Medical Association — who began her new job on April 1, 2026.

In this wide-ranging interview, host Avis Favaro talks with Dr. Reimer about the origins of her commitment to public service, how sleep deprivation and burnout were turning points in her career, what her work in Nairobi taught her about looking beyond our borders and how leading Manitoba’s COVID-19 Vaccine Taskforce shifted how she communicates.

This episode is available in English.

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.

Every day across Canada seniors who live in long-term care are sent to hospital for medical care, some in their final days of life. In fact, according to new data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, nearly one in five transferred from long-term care to the ER die within a day - meaning they were likely near end of life. Which raises the question, were these transfers necessary, ethical and what the residents really wanted?

Host Avis Favaro talks with Jill Oliver, an ethicist from the William Osler Health System in Brampton, Ontario about a new program called POET, which stands for the Prevention Of Error-based Transfers. The aim - to make sure residents have their wishes respected, especially at the end of life. And two members of a LTC home that adopted POET - Lindsay Passfield and Lori Norris-Dudley - describe the profound difference the program has made in the life and death of the residents they care for

This episode is available in English.

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.

There are some 3.8 million men across Canada who are 65 and older- with studies showing once they leave the workforce they lose connections, friendships, and purpose. Loneliness in this group boosts the risk of heart disease, depression, dementia and even suicide.

So how do you help keep this large and growing group of older Canadians mentally and physically healthy, and out of hospital and long-term care? We're going to introduce you to something called "Shedicine” - or Shed Medicine. These are men's groups - called Men's Sheds- sprouting up across the country and around the world. They’re turning sawdust, tools, and hobbies into conversations and companionship. And it's medicinal, say advocates.

It's an important example of the power of community senior support programs. Surveys show that over 90% of older Canadians want to stay in their homes and their communities. So, Canada needs to tap into the over 8,000 independent groups like Men's Sheds to keep seniors physically and mentally healthy.

In this episode host Avis Favaro talks with Robert Goluch, President of Men’s Sheds Canada, about this relatively new program to help older men stay happy, healthy and living longer and Raza Mirza, a gerontologist and chief operating officer of Help Age Canada, a non-profit charity that works with community-based senior service organizations to keep seniors in their communities and out of hospital.

This episode is available in English.

https://www.youtube.com/@MensShedsCanada

https://www.linkedin.com/company/men-s-sheds-canada/

https://www.instagram.com/menssheds_canada/

https://www.facebook.com/people/Mens-Sheds-Canada/61573205204280/

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.

Canada has a new distinction. Our country has been crowned the second-largest Ozempic user in the world. Most of us know about Ozempic’s class of drugs, GLP-1s, for weight loss, courtesy of testimonials from celebrities like Oprah Winfrey. But the reality is Ozempic, or semaglutide, was first developed for type 2 diabetes, a serious disease that can lead to blindness, kidney failure, amputations and heart attacks.

New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows that our health system has gone from spending about $13 million a year on Ozempic to over $800 million a year — an increase of nearly 6,000%. CIHI’s pharmaceutical data tool allows users to explore this dramatic rise in spending and see how drug costs are shifting across the country. It’s now the fastest growing drug expense for the public purse. Sticker shock for some, but as host Avis Favaro discovers, according to diabetes specialist and University of Calgary professor Dr. David Lau, paying upfront for this miracle drug will be well worth it in the long run.

This episode is available in English only.

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.

From going without electricity to relying on food banks, Canada’s seniors are struggling to age with dignity. Data shows that 1 in 5 live at the poverty line, with rent and housing eating up their meagre incomes. As well, 91% of seniors say they want to live at home, but the support isn’t always there — for example, home care may not reach seniors in rural communities. All of this is leaving our stressed health systems to fill the gap. And the pressure is only growing. In fact, in 2026, Canada officially became a super-aged nation — meaning that at least 20% of the population (1 in 5 people) is age 65 or older.

In this episode, host Avis Favaro speaks with seniors across Canada who are struggling to make ends meet, as well as with Dr. Samir Sinha — a geriatric specialist at the Sinai Health System and an advisor to Canada’s National Institute on Ageing — on why, despite decades of warning, our country seems wholly unprepared to care for our aging population.

This episode is available in English only.

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.

In a world where AI sits in our pockets and answers our questions in seconds, how do we know when to trust the technology with our personal health? On today’s episode, host Avis Favaro talks with Alvina Nadeem, an engineer, mother and ovarian cancer survivor who says AI likely saved her life when she input symptoms that she had ignored into ChatGPT and it flagged the possibility she had cancer.

But researchers from the University of Waterloo, including Sirisha Rambhatla, Director of the Critical Machine Learning (ML) Lab at the University of Waterloo, caution that using artificial intelligence to self-diagnose illness can misinform. They found that AI was right about a third of the time when prompted using real-world questions.

Bottom line: AI can be a powerful tool for health care, but experts urge it needs some kind of guardrails to prevent it from doing more harm than good.

The episode is available in English only.

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.

According to CIHI’s new report on the state of Canada’s health workforce, 5.7 million Canadians don’t have a primary care provider. In this episode, host Avis Favaro talks with Emily Stevenson, the director of Practice and Policy with the Ontario Physiotherapy Association, and family physician Dr. Alexander Glover about one way to ease pressures on family doctors due to an aging and injured population. It’s a growing trend in Canada and other parts of the world known as first-contact physiotherapy: allowing patients to see a physiotherapist when they have back and joint pain, arthritis and sports injuries instead of waiting to see a doctor. Studies show that first-contact physiotherapy helps patients faster — and at a lower cost to the system — while freeing up primary care providers for other patients in need.

This episode is available in English.

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.

When you call 911, police, fire or paramedics respond. But did you know they have no access to any medical information before they arrive? They’ll only get it at the scene — if you’re conscious and can tell them, if someone else is there, or if you have a medical bracelet or card with details. But even then, studies show the information, which is relayed by phone, takes an average of 7 minutes from dispatch, which delays medical treatment.

In this episode, host Avis Favaro talks with Leslie McGill, president and CEO of MedicAlert, about a world-first experiment with Ottawa’s emergency services to get 911 dispatchers access to health data, not when first responders reach the patient, but in the blink of an eye.

This episode is available in English.

Episode transcripts can be found on our podcast web page.

Learn more about the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI).

Say hello on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also stay up to date on the latest news and upcoming releases with our monthly newsletter.

Vous préférez les balados français? Voyez le Balado d’information sur la santé au Canada.