Health Canada and JDRF Take Action to Defeat Diabetes

Health Canada and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) announce funding to prevent, detect, manage, and treat diabetes. On that, and more, here is your Syntax Weekly Health Round-Up.

On the Hill

• The House of Commons and the Senate are now adjourned for the summer. The House is scheduled to return on Monday, September 18, while the Senate is scheduled to return on Tuesday, September 19.

Around Cabinet 

• The federal government, in collaboration with JDRF Canada, announced an investment of $33 million to support 12 research projects that will work to prevent, detect, manage, and treat diabetes. Four research teams will work on precision medicine in type 1 diabetes to tailor diabetes care to each patient’s specific needs and investigate the diversity within beta cell populations. An additional seven teams will investigate the mental, emotional, and social effects of diabetes, and diabetes prevention and management, with an emphasis on children and young adults. The Government of Canada is providing funding for this investment through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), as part of the 100 Years of Insulin initiative to accelerate Canadian discoveries to defeat diabetes.
• Health Canada announced that scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory and their international partners have discovered new genetic variants in people of African ancestries living with HIV that may explain why certain people in these populations naturally have a lower viral load, which slows down the virus from replicating and transmitting. Their findings were published in the scientific journal Nature. This is the first new genetic variant discovered in nearly 30 years of HIV research.

Around the Dominion

• Health PEI announced that Home Care Services are now available in French to better support PEI’s Francophone community in the Prince County area. The service officially began June 19, 2023, with funding support from Health Canada.
• The government of Nova Scotia announced that transgender and gender-diverse Nova Scotians will receive more supportive healthcare under the new, comprehensive Gender-Affirming Care Policy that took effect July 28. The policy aims to ensure high-quality, timely, comprehensive, equitable, culturally appropriate and safe services are provided to transgender and gender-diverse Nova Scotians.
• The government of Alberta announced that, to improve access to lab testing, Alberta Health Services and DynaLife have made the joint decision to allow Alberta Precision Laboratories (APL) to offer more community lab appointments. APL already handles lab work in all hospitals and urgent-care centres in the province and offers community lab services in rural areas.