July 24th is International Self Care Day.
Amidst the headlines of the war in Ukraine, the wildfires of Canada and the politics of North America, it isn’t expected to generate buzz. Simply put, it never has. And that’s a frustrating fact of life for those of us that understand what a great story it should be.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines self-care as “the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider.” While making self-care accessible, affordable, and effective clearly benefits individuals by helping us treat minor ailments, prevent and manage chronic diseases, and more, self-care’s benefits actually go far beyond the individual. According to WHO, self-care interventions contribute to improved society-wide outcomes including increased health coverage and access, reduced health disparities, increased quality of services, improved human rights and social outcomes, as well as reduced costs and more efficient use of healthcare resources and services.
Self-care holds tremendous potential to reduce burdens on Canada’s publicly-funded health care system, which is already stretched thin. Today, 2% of Canadians with colds, headaches or heartburn seek professional care despite mild to moderate symptoms. If they instead shifted to self-care, we could eliminate more than 3 million unneeded doctor visits annually and free up sufficient physician resources to allow an additional 500,000 Canadians access to a family doctor.
In Canada, unfortunately, we fall short of capturing self-care’s benefits. Self-care products face an overly burdensome regulatory framework that is based on the system for prescription medications. This slows down approval of products, disincentivizes innovation, and ultimately decreases choice and increases costs for consumers.
That’s why, for almost a decade, stakeholders in the self-care industry have been working with government to develop a sound, risk-based regulatory framework for everyday self-care essentials like natural health products (NHPs), non-prescription drugs (OTCs), and cosmetics.
A self-care framework had been slated for completion by 2019, but progress has lagged. Government now says these much-needed regulatory reforms will not be completed until after 2025. This unacceptable lack of progress on finalizing a self-care framework has worsened backlogs and delays for product authorization and manufacturing licenses, threatening product availability, halting product launches, and setting back major planned expansions into export markets.
In the meantime, government has proposed a cost recovery scheme for NHPs - a classic example of “putting the cart before the horse.” Putting NHP cost recovery forward without a more complete framework in place is not an effective path forward, and will not fix the more serious problems recently identified by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD). Furthermore, any cost recovery program rushed into implementation now would only need to be reimagined when Canada finally does adopt a self-care framework.
Rather than divert attention and resources with the NHP cost recovery rule-making, FHCP is urging government to accelerate the conclusion of the remaining elements of the self-care framework. These elements include things like making product authorization more efficient and making regulations consistent across the country – so that Canadians don’t miss out on new products or can no longer afford the ones they depend on, and so that product choice and access are the same whether you live in Ontario or Vancouver.
It’s long past time for government to invest in the future of self-care. Self-care is already an essential part of life, and its benefits to individuals and to the overall Canadian health care system are clear.
This op-ed was originally published on LinkedIn.