A recent report by Children First Canada showed a “multi-billion-dollar price tag” associated with the need for more resources in children’s and adolescent health care.
The report titled Pedianomics: The Social Return on Investment in Improving the Health and Wellbeing of Children and Adolescents was released on May 31, and analyzed health budgeting for children by governments, targeted financial health supports, spending on mental health, and the economic toll of the “tripledemic paediatric crisis” in fall 2022.
The 64-page report analyzed five years worth of data specificall related to childrens health and wellbeing.
“This report is really highlighted that children receive a disproportionate disproportionately smaller share of federal and provincial health resources. There's clear evidence that when you give kids a healthy startup you have healthier adults. It's not rocket science,” said Austin, founder and CEO of CFC in an interview.
Austin said, despite intuitively knowing there were “hard economic costs” associated with the paediatric crisis last fall, she was surprised at the “$60 million price tag to the economy from having parents particularly moms looking after their sick kids for weeks on end.”
“I am a parent of a young child and I think if you asked any parent or grandparent with school aged children this past fall, most of us experienced this in a very personal way, having to juggle work and childcare when our kids were gravely ill,” she said.
The crisis last fall involved an explosion of RSV, COVID-19, and influenza cases in children that flooded the healthcare system and, in some cases, extended wait times in hospitals to 18 to 20 hours, stated the report.
Women “disproportionately impacted” by issues brought on by the pandemic including school and childcare closures that caused them to miss work.
Vivic Research analyzed public data on weekly workplace hours missed due to personal/family responsibilities from September to December 2022 and the trends for mothers and fathers with children under 12 were compared to trends for women and men under 60 without children, according to the report.
Vivic Research found there was a spike in missed work hours by mothers with children under 12-years-old and the economic costs associated with the missed hours resulted in lost wages of around $50 million for women and just over $13 million for fathers.
“There's obviously huge implications for employers when they can't count on their employees to be at work for days or weeks on end because they’re caring for their sick children…but it also has a bigger impact on our economy when people you know very crassly are simply just not as productive when they're juggling caring for their very sick children,” said Austin.
The report also included information on the amount of money associated with child abuse, obesity, bullying, and issues with resource allocation when it comes to First Nations, Métis, Inuit populations, and those living in rural settings.
Austin said those in rural setting didn’t necessarily have access to children’s hospital care when in crisis.
“In the fall that many families really struggled to be able to access their GP or pediatrician in their community or to get to a walk-in clinic when their kids were gravely ill not being able to access medicines there. That's true for kids even in urban areas, but particularly so for rural communities,” she said.
Austin said this research builds and adds to the work of other organizations and healthcare leaders calling for the need to look at the urban and rural disparities that exist within the healthcare system, “and ensure that wherever kids live whatever part of our province, whatever part of our country that they have access to equitable care.”
Austin said there are costs related to improving the health and wellbeing of children, but the moral and economic costs associated with keeping the status quo are much higher.
“We think the report really puts a spotlight on the urgency around this and provides a clear business case for actions,” she said.
