Your Keeping in Touch eNewsletter team will participate in this webinar and provide a report for the December edition of Keeping in Touch. In this edition we will also report on the 2012 Child Poverty Report Card, recently released by First Call: BC Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition. From the BC Healthy Living Alliance website…

Is poverty inevitable? And if not, then what have other Provinces and Territories done to lift up low income citizens and bring down the poverty rate?  What is the connection between income and health? What is life like for those who have to get by with the bare minimum?

Join the BC Healthy Living Alliance on WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 12^TH from 9:00 am to 10:30 am for a webinar to explore the complex issue of low income and health. We’ll look at how poverty is challenging the health of British Columbians and our healthcare system, what solutions have been proposed in BC and what is working in other parts of Canada.

Click here to register

Presenters:

Ted Bruce, as the Executive Director of Population Health for Vancouver Coastal Health, is responsible for the development of the health authority’s strategy to address the social determinants of health and reduce health inequities. Mr. Bruce is also an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Practice in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and Adjunct Professor with the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and Past-President of the Public Health Association of BC. Mr. Bruce will discuss the connection between income and health, the negative impact of poverty and challenges to the healthcare system.

Fraser Stuart is on income assistance and lives in a single room occupancy hotel in Vancouver's downtown eastside. Although Mr. Stuart has worked in the aviation field, as front-line staff in a homeless shelter and as a self-employed light contractor, he is currently unable to work because of a variety of medical conditions but has been denied disability benefits. Mr. Fraser will share his experiences and give us an insider’s view of what it is like to live on income assistance.

Trish Garner is the Community Organizer for the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition and the co-author of A Poverty Reduction Plan for BC. She gained her experience working with Raise the Rates, an anti-poverty group based in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. In 2008, she co-founded the Poverty Olympics, a community festival that highlighted the disparity between public spending on the Olympics and people living in poverty. Ms. Garner will outline the potential of the Provincial Poverty Reduction Plan promoted by her coalition which is endorsed by over 350 organizations province-wide.