In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, York Region Public Health has resumed programs that had to be put on hold like dental clinics and children's vaccinations.
While the public health unit continues to respond to COVID-19, it is focusing on childhood vaccinations, dental clinics, the opioid endemic and a community health assessment to come in the new year.
“It was sort of the completion of our transition from COVID to post-COVID,” York Region medical officer of health Dr. Barry Pakes said. “Everything is back to normal in some ways, but with the addition of COVID, which is a really big and important program that we do, obviously, have to keep working on.”
The pandemic continued throughout the year, with public health recently restarting vaccination efforts last fall. That came ahead of a recent resurgence, with wastewater data indicating COVID-19 is spreading at the highest rate it has in the past couple of years.
Pakes said hospitalizations have significantly increased, but there is some indication of a plateau in cases. But influenza could continue rising, he added.
“Having just worked in an emergency room for a little while over the break, it’s just dramatic the difference between pre-COVID and now in terms of number of people in respiratory distress. It's really, critically, important for people to get vaccinated,” he said.
Child immunizations remain a point of focus for public health. With the program suspended during the pandemic, public health has worked in the past couple of years to hold clinics and do more awareness.
Now, public health is moving onto enforcement, with parents getting warned by letter about the possibility of school suspension if they do not provide proof of immunization, Pakes said. He said many parents may not realize that they are responsible for submitting the proof of immunization to the public health unit, as there is no central registry with that information for their children.
“They need to do that in order to avoid suspension,” he said. “They still have time to do that, but really that’s the only way we can know how many kids in our community have received vaccines. But we do have a good sense from other data, most kids, the overwhelming majority, have been vaccinated.”
The submission from parents should give public health a better idea of where the community stands on childhood vaccines, and what still needs to be done, Pakes said. Public health hopes to get all these records in by the end of the school year.
He said although there may be a small increase over how many opt against childhood vaccination — typically two to three per cent before the pandemic — it should not be an increase of any magnitude.
You can find more information and update your child's immunization records through york.ca/get-immunized or use the QR code below:
New plan to fight overdoses
Public Health has also continued to spearhead efforts to address opioids, creating a new action plan for 2024 alongside partners in the Community Opioid and Drug Response Collaborative. It lays out 20 different actions to address the crisis, including promoting education on stigma reduction, increase access to urgent and compassionate substance use treatment and enhance harm reduction.
Opioid use spiked in Ontario and York Region in the past few years, though dipped in 2022. There were 70 overdose deaths in 2021, compared to 65 in 2022, with data on 2023 not yet finalized.
“Any preventable death like that is certainly tragic and we’re working on all fronts,” Pakes said of overdose deaths. “Not only to prevent those, but understand it better.”
Assessing York Region
Public health is undertaking population health assessment to better gauge the status of York Region’s health post-pandemic and use it to inform program delivery.
Pakes said that has involved speaking with health providers about what they are seeing, as well as data analysis. He added that it is a “huge undertaking.”
“One of the challenges in Ontario, our health-care system … we don’t have great data systems. We don’t have a single electronic medical record,” he said. “We need to rely on all kinds of other sources of data.”
Mental health will be part of that assessment, Pakes noted.
“Everyone is talking about the mental health of folks of all ages, but particularly youth,” he said. “But we want to know how significant is that and what can we potentially do about it.
The assessment should create tools that public health can use, Pakes added, but also things for the community to digest, as well as actionable steps for individuals.
York Region is also planning events for Canada Public Health Week in the first week of April, created three years ago to celebrate the sector.
Pakes said that before the pandemic, it was a sector “that not everybody in the public actually knew existed.”
He said the events this year would be “a real opportunity to recognize the roles and successes of everybody across the field of public health.”
