Ronald Labonté
Biographic Data
| ID | 119601 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ronald Labonté |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ronald |
| FAMILY NAME | Labonté |
| SIGNATURE | LABONTÉ R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Ottawa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0615-740X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 166 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 311 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 165 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
From rupture to recourse
Canadian mines, global issues
While a global player in the mining and metals sector, there is little regulatory oversight by Canada of Canadian mining companies in relation to their transnational activities. Much mineral exploration and mining take place in remote and rural areas inhabited by Indigenous and other minoritized and/or marginalized communities, and has been linked to worsening health, social, and environmental conditions. Few effective legal mechanisms exist to m…
Globalization and health in an emerging new world order
Sending State Perspectives on the Global Migration of Indian Nurses
India has become one of the key sources for the global nursing labour force. While there is significant research on the experiences of Indian‐trained nurses in destination countries and their motivations to migrate, relatively less work explores the role of the sending state in this policy field, and rarely are subregional differences considered. In this paper, we focus on the policies and processes that are designed to or otherwise affect nurse …
Health systems impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on malaria control program implementation and malaria burden in Benin
The COVID-19 pandemic has sent ripple effects across health systems and impacted the burden of many other diseases, such as malaria in sub-Saharan Africa. This study takes a mixed method approach to assess the impact of COVID-19 on malaria control programs in three rural communes in Benin. We conducted individual semi-structured interviews with key informants who play important roles in malaria control in Benin at three levels of the health syste…
Analyzing One Health governance and implementation challenges in Mexico
Establishing a robust One Health (OH) governance is essential for ensuring effective coordination and collaboration among human, animal, and environmental health sectors to prevent and address complex health challenges like zoonoses or antimicrobial resistance. This study conducted a mixed-methods environmental scan to assess to what extent Mexico displays a OH governance and identify opportunities for improvement. Through documentary analysis, t…
Pandemics, intellectual property and ‘our economy’
Despite self-congratulatory rhetoric, Canada compromised COVID-19 vaccine equity with policies impeding a proposed global waiver of vaccine intellectual property (IP) rules. To learn from Canada's vaccine nationalism we explore the worldview - a coherent textual picture of the world - in a sample of Government of Canada communications regarding global COVID-19 vaccine sharing. Analysed documents portray risks and disparities as unrelated to the d…
Public health can no longer fence-sit politically
Population Health and Health Promotion
Where's the Disconnect? Exploring Pathways to Healthcare Coordinated for Youth Experiencing Homelessness in Toronto, Canada, Using Grounded Theory Methodology
About 900 youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) reside at an emergency youth shelter (EYS) in Toronto on any given night. Several EYSs offer access to healthcare based on youths' needs, including access to primary care, and mental health and addictions support. However, youth also require healthcare from the broader health system, which is often challenging to navigate and access. Currently, little is known about healthcare coordination efforts b…
Evolution and expansion of the One Health approach to promote sustainable and resilient health and well-being
One Health is a transdisciplinary approach used to address complex concerns related to human, animal, plant, and ecosystem health. One Health frameworks and operational tools are available to support countries and communities, particularly for the prevention and control of zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance and the protection of food safety. However, One Health has yet to be implemented in a manner that fully considers the complexitie…
Community-level impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on malaria prevention and health-seeking behaviours in rural Benin
Globally, negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on malaria prevention and control efforts have been caused by delayed distributions of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLIN), decreased outpatient attendance, and disruptions to malaria testing and treatment. Using a mixed methods approach, we aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on community-level malaria prevention and health-seeking practices in Benin more than one year after the start of…
Policies to prevent zoonotic spillover
BACKGROUND: Emerging infectious diseases of zoonotic origin present a critical threat to global population health. As accelerating globalisation makes epidemics and pandemics more difficult to contain, there is a need for effective preventive interventions that reduce the risk of zoonotic spillover events. Public policies can play a key role in preventing spillover events. The aim of this review is to identify and describe evaluations of public p…
Foregrounding women and household dynamics to inform Article 17
Women hold agency within tobacco-growing households and participate in decision-making processes regarding tobacco agriculture. Women should be included in future tobacco control policies and programmes pertaining to Article 17
Exploring the political economy nexus of tobacco production and control
A survey of International Health Regulations National Focal Points experiences in carrying out their functions
BACKGROUND: The 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR (2005)) require States Parties to establish National Focal Points (NFPs) responsible for notifying the World Health Organization (WHO) of potential events that might constitute public health emergencies of international concern (PHEICs), such as outbreaks of novel infectious diseases. Given the critical role of NFPs in the global surveillance and response system supported by the IHR, we s…
A pandemic treaty, revised international health regulations, or both
Global health diplomacy in Mexico
BACKGROUND: Global health diplomacy (GHD) focuses on the actions taken by diverse stakeholders from different nations -governments, multilateral agents, and civil society- to phenomena that can affect population health and its determinants beyond national borders. Although the literature on conceptual advancements of GHD exists, empirical studies about how health becomes an issue of relevance for foreign policy are scarce. We present an analysis …
Characterizing ‘health equity’ as a national health sector priority for maternal, newborn, and child health in Ethiopia
Background: The pursuit of health equity is a priority in Ethiopia, especially with regards to maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH). To date, there has been little characterization of the ‘problem’ of health inequity, and the normative assumptions implicit in the representation of the problem. Yet, such insights have implications for shaping the framing, incentivization, and implementation of health policies and their wider impact.Objective…
Global Health Diplomacy (GHD) and the integration of health into foreign policy
Since the end of the Cold War, health has gone from a peripheral concern in foreign policy negotiations to a prominent place on the global political agenda. While the rise of health onto the foreign policy agenda is by now old news, the driving forces behind its expansion into new political spheres remain understudied and undertheorized. This article builds on empirical findings from a four-country study of the integration of health into foreign …
Glossary on free trade agreements and health part 2
Part 1 of this glossary provided a brief background on the rise of regional/bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and described the health implications of new trade obligations that figure prominently in current and recent trade negotiations, focusing on those provisions that build on previous agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This approach continues into part 2 of the glossary, which also considers components of FTAs that have n…
Glossary on free trade agreements and health part 1
The global trading system has undergone a shift away from multilateral trade negotiations to a ‘spaghetti-bowl’ of regional and bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). In this two-part glossary, we discuss why this shift has occurred, focusing on how it poses new challenges for public health. Specifically, we introduce key terms that shape this new trading environment and explain them through a public health lens. Part 1 of this glossary focuses …
Canada, global vaccine supply, and the TRIPS waiver
Ethnic and racial disparities in Covid-19-related deaths
COVID-19 has further exposed the strong association between race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status and health outcomes and illuminated monumental ethnoracialised differences reflecting the 'colour of disease'. Racism, segregation and inequality have been invisibly and pervasively embedded in dominant cultures and social institutions for decades. The socioeconomic factors that negatively influence health outcomes within the underserved min…
Tackling Covid-19
Events have progressed with dizzying rapidity since the World Health Organization (WHO) was first alerted to cases of severe pneumonia in the Wuhan City of China on December 31st 2019. The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic on March 11th 2020. As of April 7th, a total of 1.38 million cases of COVID-19 had been diagnosed globally with over 78 000 deaths attributable to the disease [1]. Comparisons have been dra…
Everything Is Perfect, and We Have No Problems
Many qualitative research studies acknowledge the possibility of social desirability bias (a tendency to present reality to align with what is perceived to be socially acceptable) as a limitation that creates complexities in interpreting findings. Drawing on experiences conducting interviews and focus groups in rural Ethiopia, this article provides an empirical account of how one research team developed and employed strategies to detect and limit…
Globalization and Health
1. Introduction: Globalization's Challenges to People's Health Ronald Labonte & Ted Schrecker 2. An Empirical Investigation of the Relation Between Globalization and Health Giovanni Andrea Cornia, Stefano Rosignoli & Luca Tiberti 3. Global Political-Economic and Geopolitical Processes, Structures and Trends Patrick Bond 4. Labor Markets, Equity and Social Determinants of Health Ted Schrecker 5. Globalization and Policy Space for Health and Social…
The rise of neoliberalism
The 2008 global financial crisis, precipitated by high-risk, under-regulated financial practices, is often seen as a singular event. The crisis, its recessionary consequences, bank bailouts and the adoption of ‘austerity’ measures can be seen as a continuation of a 40-year uncontrolled experiment in neoliberal economics. Although public spending and recapitalisation of failing banks helped prevent a 1930s-style Great Depression, the deep austerit…
Evaluating community capacity
The aim of the present study was to examine the convergence of two approaches used to assess community capacity in health promotion interventions. One was used to examine women and men in rural communities in Fiji, and the other to study women only in rural communities in Nepal. Both approaches used a set of 'capacity domains', a ranking scale and a means of visually representing the findings. The experiences of using each approach, and the stren…
Health inequities in the age of austerity
Person, Perception, and Place
Advancing health equity in the global marketplace
The WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH) ascribed health disparities within and between countries to "a toxic combination of poor social policies and programmes, unfair economic arrangements, and bad politics." This article analyzes the relevance of the international human rights framework (IHRF) to the Commission's goal of reducing health disparities with reference to both social scientific and legal scholarship. We begin with …
Patients beyond borders
This exploratory study assesses the experiences of medical travelers seeking out of country health care in four destination countries: India, China, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. It aims to identify the source countries of medical travelers, to understand their reasons for seeking out-of-country care, the type of services they obtained, and their level of satisfaction with the experience. Cost, physician and facility reputation and hospita…
Community Capacity Building
Addressing the Non-medical Determinants of Health
Rhetoric and the law, or the law of rhetoric
How do actors with asymmetrical power assert authority in policy agenda-setting? A study of authority claims by health actors in trade policy
Comprehensive primary health care under neo-liberalism in Australia
This paper applies a critical analysis of the impact of neo-liberal driven management reform to examine changes in Australian primary health care (PHC) services over five years. The implementation of comprehensive approaches to primary health care (PHC) in seven services: five state-managed and two non-government organisations (NGOs) was tracked from 2009 to 2014. Two questions are addressed: 1) How did the ability of Australian PHC services to i…
Comprehensive Primary Health Care in South America
This article summarizes an extensive review of South American experiences with primary health care since the Declaration of Alma-Ata. It aims to address the following specific questions: What are the enabling and constraining historical and structural conditions for primary health care policies and practices? How has health care reform supported or undermined primary health care? What evidence exists on the effectiveness of primary health care? W…
Committed to health for all? How the G7/G8 rate
Global tobacco control and economic norms
Tobacco control norms have gained momentum over the past decade. To date 43 of 47 Sub-Saharan African countries are party to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The near universal adoption of the FCTC illustrates the increasing strength of these norms, although the level of commitment to implement the provisions varies widely. However, tobacco control is enmeshed in a web of international norms that has bearing on how governments …
Impact of the 2008 global financial crisis on the health of Canadians
BACKGROUND: Despite a clear impact on the Canadian economy, little is known about the subsequent health impacts of the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) in this country. This study fills this gap in knowledge by conducting a repeated cross-sectional analysis of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). METHODS: Data from 7 cycles (2007-2013) of the CCHS were combined to form a large data set representative of the Canadian working-age populati…
Reflections on stories and a story/dialogue method in health research
All research can be considered a form of story‐telling, a narrative that begins with a set of questions and assumptions and then follows a convention, based on the researcher’s epistemological and methodological stance, in how the findings are presented and interpreted. Stories also have long history of use in research, as therapy, testament, testimony, data and aesthetic expression. One particular form of the use of stories is a ‘story‐dialogue’…
Glossary of the World Trade Organisation and public health
Banning shisha smoking in public places in Iran
INTRODUCTION: Shisha smoking is a widespread custom in Iran with a rapidly growing prevalence especially among the youth. In this article, we analyze the policy process of enforcing a federal/state ban on shisha smoking in all public places in Kerman Province, Iran. Guided by the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), we investigate how a shisha smoking ban reached the political agenda in 2011, how it was framed by different policy actors, and why n…
The Canadian Index of Wellbeing
Grand Challenges Canada
Glossary on the World Trade Organisation and public health
Part 1 of this glossary introduced different health and trade arguments, overviewed the history of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), defined key “trade talk” terms, and reviewed three WTO treaties concerned with trade in goods (GATT 1994, the Agreement on Agriculture, and the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures). Part 2 reviews five more agreements and the growing number of bilateral and regional trade agreements, and concludes wit…
Canada, global vaccine supply, and the TRIPS waiver
Shifting from tobacco growing to alternatives in Malawi? A qualitative analysis of policy and perspectives
Tobacco is the primary export commodity in Malawi and an important contributor to foreign earnings. The entrenchment of tobacco interests within government has partly explained why Malawi has lagged in its efforts to address the health consequences of tobacco and has been a vocal opponent of global tobacco control. Despite the extensive historical and entrenched relationship between the economy of Malawi and tobacco production, there have been im…
Social inequality and healthy public policy
For decades, health education programmes have been based on the assumption that individual behaviours (for example smoking, drug use, eating patterns) are the major risk-factors in contemporary illness. This assumption often led to interventions that subtly "blamed the victim" for his or her ill-health. In recent years the broader social conceptualization of health and illness has directed many health educators' attention towards socio-economic a…
Econology
Part One of this article explored three relationships (health-environment, health-economy and economy-environment) inherent in integrating health and sustainable development. Information about these relationships (and in some instances the lack of information or intrinsic uncertainty in the relationship) give rise to a number of principles that can be used to guide sustainable development decision-making. The 12 principles developed in this artic…
Econology
Environmental sustainability is rapidly becoming the most critical public health issue. Prevailing notions of health in environmental decision-making do not embody concepts inherent in health promotion and the new public health. Health promotion emphasizes the importance of income and power equity, and social support/connectedness (health-economy relationship), alongside direct and indirect human health threats posed by environmental toxins (heal…
Heart health inequalities in Canada
It is well known that prevalence and incidence rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CVD risk factors are not equally distributed among socioeconomic groups. Known risk factors account for part, but not all of unequally distributed CVD rates. Socioeconomic conditions and psychosocial dynamics may explain another pare of the increased CVD rates. Theoretically, it may be possible to lower CVD rates and CVD risk factor prevalence among lower soc…
Health Promotion and Empowerment
Recent reformulations of health promotion focus on empowerment as both a means and an end in health promotion practice. Both concepts, however, are rarely examined for their assumptions about social change processes or the potential of community groups, professionals, and institutions to create healthier living situations. This article attends to some of these assumptions, expressing ideas generated during 6 years of professional training worksho…
The population health/health promotion debate in Canada
An earlier version of this article appeared in the Canadian Journal of Public Health (1995) 86:165-8, as ‘Population health and health promotion: what do they have to say to each other?’
Healthy Public Policy and the World Trade Organization
Poverty, other forms of social inequality and human impacts on the environment are increasingly recognized as important, perhaps fundamental, health determinants. These determinants, in turn, are largely conditioned and constrained by economic practices, and by government legislation that regulates such practices or seeks to mitigate inequalities that arise from them. Over the past two decades the ability of national governments to intervene in e…
Health promotion and the common good
One of the ethical dilemmas facing health promotion and disease prevention (HP/DP) practitioners is ensuring that programmes undertaken in the name of health as a ‘common good’ do not unnecessarily restrict individual liberties. This dilemma is compounded by theories of the common good being essentially normative and broadly categorized as libertarian (individual rights) or social justice (collective responsibilities). Both of these common good t…
Capacity building in health promotion, Part 2
Capacity building has been a topic in health promotion literature for several years. In our previous article, we discussed community capacity building as both means and end in health promotion work, and reviewed seven theoretical and empirical models of community capacity which provide a total of nine separate capacity domains. In this article we discuss the parallel tracking of community capacity building in health-promotion program planning, im…
Capacity building in health promotion, Part 1
Capacity building has been a topic in health promotion literature for several years. Similar constructs that preceded it include community development and community empowerment. More recent constructs, notably social capital and social cohesion, make roughly similar claims on the same social space. This space essentially describes elements of peoples' day-to-day relationships, conditioned and constrained by economic and political practices, that …
Liberalisation, health and the World Trade Organisation
The contemporary globalisation project of which Baum writes rests on the promise that economic growth benefits all. 1 Originally enforced through Structural Adjustment Programs' trinity of privatisation, reduced public spending and increased trade liberalisation, it is the benefits of the latter that now dominate the "globalisation is good" argument. So dominant is this claim that it deserves closer scrutiny
International Governance and World Trade Organization (WTO) reform
(2002). International Governance and World Trade Organization (WTO) reform. Critical Public Health: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 65-86
Evaluating community capacity
The aim of the present study was to examine the convergence of two approaches used to assess community capacity in health promotion interventions. One was used to examine women and men in rural communities in Fiji, and the other to study women only in rural communities in Nepal. Both approaches used a set of 'capacity domains', a ranking scale and a means of visually representing the findings. The experiences of using each approach, and the stren…
Health and development
In recent years, the annual G7/G8 summit meetings of the world's most powerful nations have emerged as a major venue for important multilateral commitments that have an impact on health and development issues. Some of these commitments, such as the creation in 2001 of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, directly involve health. Others, such as those involving debt relief or trade liberalisation, may affect health indirectly, …
Wanted
Y ou are excited by the challenge of Canada’s interesting constitutional division of powers , in which the federal government is expected to contribute to health systems largely under the control of provincial governments, most of which will constitutionally disagree with anything you propose except the promise of more money. You are resistant to media attacks that continually point to the declining federal contribution to health systems , and ar…
Community Capacity Building
Social inclusion/exclusion
The last decade has seen many of the 'community' concepts in health (community empowerment, community capacity) replaced by 'social' concepts (social capital, social cohesion). The continuous re-labelling of roughly similar phenomena may be a necessary stratagem to attract attention to the economic and power inequalities that arise from undisciplined markets. Social concepts also have an advantage over community ones by directing that attention t…
Committed to health for all? How the G7/G8 rate
Establishing and sustaining community–university partnerships
Community is a key construct in population health research and a major locus of health determinants study. In recent years in Canada, a new emphasis on such research has emerged in the form of community–university partnerships, supported by several of the major research granting agencies. The authors regard such partnerships as a special case of participatory action research (PAR), albeit one where greater emphasis is placed on the institutional …
Interrogating globalization, health and development
Health researchers recognize the need to better understand the ways in which contemporary globalization can lead to improved health for all, especially for the poor. This requires expanding the global health research agenda beyond a disease-specific focus to one that also examines the social, environmental and economic contexts that partly determine the incidence and persistence of many diseases, and to understand how these contexts shape health …
Beyond the divides
The term 'population health' has supplanted that of public health and health promotion in many Anglophone countries. The ideas underlying the term are not new and owe much to the legacies of nineteenth-century public health radicalism, Latin American social medicine and, more recently, social epidemiology. Its influential modeling by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in the early 1990s, however, was criticized for a lack of theory, rel…
A gender analysis of quality of life in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Glossary of the World Trade Organisation and public health
Glossary on the World Trade Organisation and public health
Part 1 of this glossary introduced different health and trade arguments, overviewed the history of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), defined key “trade talk” terms, and reviewed three WTO treaties concerned with trade in goods (GATT 1994, the Agreement on Agriculture, and the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures). Part 2 reviews five more agreements and the growing number of bilateral and regional trade agreements, and concludes wit…
The G8 and Global Health
Political science (134 works) · Medicine (114 works) · Public health (95 works) · Economics (92 works) · Economic growth (82 works) · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology (77 works) · Health care (65 works) · Sociology (59 works) · Business (57 works) · Law (53 works)