To mark International Children Right’s Day, the New Brunswick Health Council (NBHC) would like to take the opportunity to highlight four key areas related to the health of children and youth in the province: achieving healthy weights, improve mental health, preventing injuries and achieving tobacco-free living.
In these areas, this year’s key findings are:
- New Brunswick has one of the highest percentages of children and youth who are overweight or obese, and the situation is not improving.
- Boys in New Brunswick suffer more injuries than girls. Injuries can lead to disability, hospitalization and death.
- In New Brunswick, mental health among children and youth is showing a negative trend, but protective factors are on the right track.
- Smoking is a major risk factor for key conditions such as lung cancer, heart disease and COPD. New Brunswick youth rank the worst in the country.
All of the information regarding the health of children and youth can be found in the Children and Youth Rights and Well-being Snapshot 2014. This document presents many available provincial indicators and measures which reflect determinants of health and well-being and have been disaggregated by children and youth with disability, immigrant status, aboriginal identity and gender. The determinants of health are the social economic and physical environment, the personal health practices and behaviours, the individual capacity and coping skills, the human biology, early childhood development and health services.
“This year we are presenting the Snapshot in a new, interactive way; the tables on our website are easy for everyone to use and fully searchable”, says Stéphane Robichaud, CEO of the NBHC. “We hope that by sharing these facts with the public we, as New Brunswickers, can have an influence on the future development of our children and youth.”
The Child and Youth Rights and Well-being Snapshot 2014 is available online at: nbhc.ca
Factsheets outlining these key areas will be available online on the NBHC website at nbhc.ca. It is important to note that these four key areas affecting children and youth are aligned with the population health priorities that were outlined in the NBHC’s 2011 Recommendations to the Minister of Health.
The information presented in the Framework only outlines part of the youth-related data collected by the NBHC; for example, community profiles called My Community at a Glance) present youth data at the community level and are available for all New Brunswick communities at http://nbhc.ca/community-profiles.
The NBHC has been established as an independent organization that measures, monitors and evaluates New Brunswick’s health care system performance and population health, and that engages citizens in the improvement of health service quality.
MEDIA CONTACT: Manon Arsenault, 506-869-6728, 506-863-7263 manon.arsenault@nbhc.ca