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When do public health problems become public policy issues? Among a plethora of genuine “health risks,” how do bona fide “public health disorders” gain recognition as such?
This presentation explains the birth of a policy initiative: the Canadian Diabetes Strategy. It stems from 14+ months of ethnographic research, mainly using unobstrusive methods. I analyzed policy documents, scientific articles, websites, press coverage, minutes, newsletters; direct observations, lectures and speeches (politicians, their advisors, diabetes researchers); I tallied references to diabetes by elected politicians in the verbatim record of Parliament, 1989-2000. To extend and verify these unobtrusive inquiries, I conducted interactive research: informal dialogues and 25 formal interviews (governments, NGOs, First Nations, biomedicine, private commerce). This presentation will show that Canadian politicians increasingly refer to diabetes because NGOs and Aboriginal governments teased out danger and opportunity in information about the epidemiology of diabetes in Canada, the United States and globally. In terms of local idiom, diabetes now registers “on the radar screen.” Diabetes became recognized as a “clear and present danger to society,” as Canada’s Minister of Health put it in 1999, but largely because diabetes smelled strongly of political opportunity. My research suggests that an issue must trip politicians’ “radar” before policies will target it. Similar to how air traffic controllers use radar and believers read oracles, politicians rely on indicators of “public opinion” and the “public good” to identify danger, spot opportunity and plot action.
Learning Objectives: Participants will learn how to catapult public health problems onto government agendas.
Keywords: Policy/Policy Development, Diabetes
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Government of Canada, US Government, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Canadian Diabetes Association, American Diabetes Association, Ekos Consultants, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: Doctoral Fellowship awarded by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), an arms-length agency of the Government of Canada.