Peel council trying to help public health unit after alarming report on chronic underfunding

“Childhood vision screening programs have potential to detect these and other eye conditions, and thus benefit an affected child’s visual and general development,” according to Public Health Ontario.

This program, implemented last year, is supposed to be carried out by local public health units. But there was no funding attached to that requirement, and in Peel Region, it hasn’t been implemented.

Peel’s chief medical officer, Jessica Hopkins, brought clarity about how these programs are failing to reach Peel kids while answering questions from Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown at last week’s regional council meeting where several members expressed concerns about the report.

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An issue that has been unfolding silently in Peel Region for years, but has received little attention in the media. It took one short report to spark off my research and what I discovered was a long list of programs that Peel public health are either not providing or struggling to keep going due to chronic underfunding from the province of Ontario.

I created the graphic treatment for this story as well.

Published on February 23, 2019 in The Pointer - Brampton