New entity created to measure, boost overall well-being of Canadians
Vision is to enable all Canadians’ participation in the ‘highest well-being status’
Friday June 12, 2009 -- Michelle Strutzenberger
A new national entity geared to measuring and ultimately boosting the overall well-being of Canadians has been created, as announced June 10 by the Honourable Roy Romanow, Former Commissioner on the Future of Health Care in Canada.

The vision for the Institute of Wellbeing is to enable all Canadians to participate in the “highest well-being status.”

The tool for achieving this is a new system of measuring how Canadians are doing that provides a much more holistic picture than just economic indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product.

The Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW) measures how well Canadians are doing in eight areas: living standards, healthy populations, community vitality, environment, time use, arts, culture and recreation, education and civic engagement.

Romanow, who is chair of the Institute of Wellbeing Advisory Board, says that an important feature of the CIW is that it will reveal how these eight areas are interrelated.

On June 10, findings for the first three domains — living standards, healthy populations, and community vitality — were unveiled.

While the news is a mix of good and bad, Romanow notes that one of the key connect-the-dot pictures emerging is that the health of Canadians is directly related to income and education.

Once the results for the remaining five domains are revealed, the objective is to bring all eight together for a full, interconnected picture of how Canadians are doing.

This information will be used to influence policy makers.

“The CIW is the voice, the tool, which will juxtapose with the GDP, hopefully, for a better set of programs,” says Romanow, adding the initial results show there is an urgent need for action already, particularly around living standards and healthy populations.

“The challenge based on these indicators to policy makers and decision makers is this: if we continue along the path of these disparities and the like, we’re going to be in worse shape, especially after the recession, than ever before and we had better seize this opportunity to deal with it.”

Plans are also underway to provide a space on the CIW website for communities to connect and share their best practices around some of the quality of life issues being identified through the index.

Lynne Slotek, institute CEO, notes that the comprehensive approach to measuring quality of life offered through the CIW appears to be resonating deeply with Canadians.

“Canadians do want to find a different way of discussing (quality of life) and (they want) to develop ways to respond to the full array of quality of life,” she says.

The findings for living standards, healthy populations and community vitality are based on data from 1981-2008.

They reveal that while Canada became a much richer country during that time, the top 20 per cent received the lion’s share of rising income and wealth.

It has also been found that while Canadians are living longer, they aren’t necessarily doing so at optimum health.

The proportion of Canadians who considered themselves as having very good or excellent health peaked in 1998 at 65.2 per cent and decreased in 2003 to 58.4 per cent.

Community vitality is a good news story, however, as researchers uncovered that Canadians have strong social relationships with their families and communities, and this is improving over time.

To read the full reports and learn more about the Institute of Wellbeing, visit www.ciw.ca.

If you have feedback on this article, please contact michelle(at)axiomnews.ca or 800-294-0051, ext. 27.