Health Reports
A Canadian peer-reviewed journal of population health and health services research
June 2020
Social isolation and mortality among Canadian seniors
by Heather Gilmour and Pamela L. Ramage-Morin
The impact of social isolation and loneliness on health and well-being is recognized globally as a public health issue. The United Kingdom appointed a Ministerial lead on loneliness and the World Health Organization recognizes the impact of social isolation on disability and death. Research generally demonstrates that social isolation is associated with increased risk of mortality on par with or greater than more traditional risk factors such as alcohol use, smoking and obesity.
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Accuracy of matching residential postal codes to census geography
by Lauren Pinault, Saeeda Khan and Michael Tjepkema
In the majority of Canadian health survey or administrative datasets, the geographic information available to researchers is limited to a residential postal code rather than a full street address, often for confidentiality reasons. Postal codes are six-character alphanumeric codes created by Canada Post Corporation to sort and deliver mail. Since postal codes do not always reflect well-defined, discrete and homogeneous spatial units, there is some uncertainty in using them to assign geographic attributes, such as exposures to environmental hazards. Postal code geography also does not always correspond with census geography, since many postal codes cross census boundaries. Therefore, postal codes may be linked to one or more units of census geography.
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Disease assimilation: The mortality impacts of fine particulate matter on immigrants to Canada
by Anders C. Erickson, Tanya Christidis, Amanda Pappin, Jeffrey R. Brook, Daniel L. Crouse, Perry Hystad, Chi Li, Randall V. Martin, Jun Meng, Lauren Pinault, Aaron van Donkelaar, Scott Weichenthal, Michael Tjepkema, Richard T. Burnett and Michael Brauer
Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution contributes to millions of deaths around the world each year and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease. Given that many immigrants to Canada arrive from countries with higher levels of ambient air pollution, they could experience an increased risk of chronic disease with exposure. While the mortality impacts of PM2.5 have been demonstrated repeatedly in large cohorts representative of the Canadian-born population, immigrants have often been excluded from these analyses to some degree. The proportion of the foreign-born population living in Canada in 2011 was 21%, or 7.1 million individuals, and is projected to rise to between 25% and 30% over the next 25 years to meet demographic and labour needs. Therefore, it is important to understand the extent to which their risks from air pollution exposure may differ from those of the general population, particularly as the population ages and a larger proportion of Canadians become seniors.
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