There's more to keeping people healthy than health care, so says a Manitoba Chief Medical Officer of Health.
Dr. Michael Routledge was a guest speaker at Prairie Mountain Health's annual general meeting yesterday.
Dr. Routledge told the AGM about the importance of creating environments that facilitate health.
"I would say that anyone can think about the things that they do on a day-to-day basis or sort of in their life that aren't maybe the best from a health standpoint, but they do it anyways. And so the question becomes are they not doing it because they don't care about their own health -- I don't think so -- or are they not doing it for different reasons? Like are there things in their lives that just don't make it easy to adopt those healthy behaviours? So I think that's kind of where we need to go."
During his presentation, Dr. Routledge said health is determined 50 per cent by social and economic situations, 15 per cent biology and genetics, 10 per cent built and natural environment, and 25 per cent health care.
