I rarely have a text for my speeches, preferring the less formal and more spontaneous form of a talk based on a Powerpoint.
A number of my speeches are available as videos on YouTube, a list with links follows. Some are avasilable on my own Youtube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwPm4qIOMmw
My main topics at present are:
Public Health in the Anthropocene: Addressing the Ecological Determinants of Health
We are entering a new geological epoch: the anthropocene. Many of our global ecological systems are in crisis and are declining as a result of the impacts of the human population’s growth, affluence and technologies. This has profound implications for our health. We need to face up to this reality and figure out how we will navigate this decline with the minimum of harm, and how in fact we can create a healthier, more hopeful future. This presentation will explore these issues and the implications for our communities and for public policy.
Healthy Cities 2.0: Creating One Planet Communities
In Canada we act as if we had five planets, in terms of our use of the Earth’s biocapacity and resources, when in reality we only have one. Other high-income counters also have very high ecological footprints, and while not as bad – yet – middle income countries also exceed their fair share of the Earth’s capacity. We are going to have to shift fairly quickly to a way of life that on the one hand has an ecological footprint of one planet – an 80% reduction in Canada – and on the other hand ensure a high quality of life and good health for all. This talk explores these ideas.
Measuring what matters
It is said that you can’t manage what you can’t – or won’t – measure. But the flip side of managing what you measure is that what you measure is what you end up managing. So if we measure the wrong things, or measure them in the wrong way, we end up managing what we measure and not necessarily what we should be managing. One of the key challenges we face in the 21st century is that in many cases we are measuring – and thus managing – the wrong things. In this presentation, I challenge governments and communities to identify and measure what truly matters – people and the planet.
Creating Healthy Communities
What is a healthy community, and how do we get one? In this presentation, the ways in which the natural, built, social and economic environments affect the health of people in communities and what people can do to create a healthier community will be addressed.
Recreation, Nature and Health
Most of the determinants of health are beyond the health care system, in the wider environmental, social and economic environments of our communities. One of those determinants that is attracting increasing attention is the recreation system, which includes parks, recreation, fitness, sports, arts and culture. There is a related interest in the importance for human wellbeing of contact with nature. This presentation will explore these issues and the implications for our communities and for public policy.
Reducing Inequalities in Health
There are unacceptably large inequalities in health in BC, Canada and around the world. These inequalities are not only unfair and unjust, they are also to a large extent avoidable. They also result in a large additional burden of disease and costs to the health care system, and a range of other social and economic costs, as well as a massive loss of human potential. In fact, poverty may be so expensive that we cannot afford it! This presentation will discuss this issue and what it will take to address it.
Making Prevention a Priority
Despite the rhetoric of successive governments throughout Canada, prevention continues to be underfunded and is not a priority. But perhaps the most important way to increase the fiscal sustainability of the health care system is to reduce the overall burden of disease and injury the system has to cope with. In this presentation, I discuss what a proper prevention strategy would look like and what it will take to implement it.
Blow it up and start again: A radical approach to health care reform
Re-orienting health services towards health involves much more than a mere alignment of public health and primary care. A true re-orientation towards health means designing a system that begins with health promotion and ends with disease and illness care, whereas our current system was designed the other way around; illness care is the focus, health promotion an afterthought. In this presentation I present and discuss a ‘bottom down’ model of a health system that I first published more than 20 years ago, which ‘blows up’ the current system and starts again, putting health at the top and hospitals at the bottom; primary care occupies an important place in the model, in a fulcrum position. I will show how quite small shifts in health and self-care might have quite a large impact on primary care and other health service utilization.
Videos of key recent presentations
“Healthy Lethbridge means healthy people in a healthy society on a healthy planet”
The Imagine Lethbridge Forum, 24 May 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkBmoZ8ceWk
No Health without a Healthy Planet – 17 Feb 2021
Health Promotion Forum of NZ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdlCaAjuu4c&feature=youtu.be
Healthy Cities 2.0: One Planet Cities
Multi-disciplinary Healthy City Webinar Series, Hong Kong, 21 January 2021
I am the first 25 minutes and in discussions for the last half hour
Economics as if wellbeing mattered!
Closing plenary at ASI 2020, the Atlantic Policy Forum on Mental Health Promotion, held online August 24-26, 2020. The theme of the Forum was ‘Upstream Investment in Mental Health Promotion: The Answer to the Mental Health Crisis’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9NZNIweccg&feature=youtu.be
Healthy One Planet Communities: Creating planetary, community and personal health
Cork (Ireland) Green Spaces for Health, 20 Oct 2020
My presentation starts at 10.30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MIIn5uBT8M&feature=youtu.be
Health in the Anthropocene: Planetary health and One Planet communities
Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment – Annual meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/A38Zn9D9bWbi_GIaJpcczDUNPkDOYHXSjyvGtKq8jNM0GEekUJcWN7aCxn-ZRY63.5SIqtJBbh6acamoL
Gaia: The ultimate setting for health promotion Opening keynote, Annual Health Promotion Conference, NUI Galway, 18 June 2020
https://nuigalway.mediaspace.kaltura.com/playlist/dedicated/161130911/1_i7oktn3r/1_sec9hil9
Also on my own Youtube Channel at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwPm4qIOMmw
Dr. Trevor Hancock - Healthy people, healthy communities, a healthy planet 