Remember the early days of Covid when people would wait impatiently for the latest news conference from Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of health?

Maybe that was just me, but the pandemic pushed public health agencies into the spotlight and now, over five years later, we might not be waiting breathlessly for public health updates anymore.

But that spotlight has never really gone away, especially with the return of things like measles.

I wanted to know more about the pressures public health agencies are facing.

So I sat down with Dr. Trevor Arnason, medical officer of health at Ottawa Public Health.

Dr. Arnison, thank you so much for joining us on the program.

You are officially three months into your new position as Ottawa's medical officer of health. Congratulations on that.

Let's talk about public health and its role. Let's talk 2025.

I'm sure there are standard practices that you have to employ just across the board.

But I am curious are there any new approaches?

Having looked at the last couple of years coming off the heels of Covid into a measles outbreak, but is there any new approaches just in general, when we talk about public health on the local level that you want to sort of play to?

So we are we are going through a renewal of the Ontario public Health standards in Ontario.

So this is the provincial standards that guide our work and what we do.

I think for me, what's top of mind in the past few months starting this new rule is how information and the information space is really affecting how people are approaching health issues.

My background working as an associate medical officer of health has largely been in vaccinations and being involved in the Covid 19 vaccination rollout.

We're seeing a lot of misinformation around vaccines, but also other all other health related issues and and treatments.

There's a lot of information being shared on the internet right now and in social media.

Well, let's pick up on the misinformation and disinformation.

Help me understand when you are around the table with your colleagues trying to figure out the proper messaging, how are you cutting through the noise?

Yeah, so a lot of it is related to basic communications approaches.

A lot of it is trying to understand where people are getting their information and how best we can speak to people so that they that we're listening and seen as a a trusted partner.

We've seen a lot of mistrust and and lack of trust for from traditional government institutions on on issues like vaccination.

And similarly, we see that people less and less have access to a trusted healthcare provider in Ontario who they can speak to about issues at the individual level.

So what we've been trying to do is engage the community and understand what some of the barriers are to getting the appropriate information.

Now, you had mentioned your background.

You were also part of Ottawa's Covid 19 task force.

Also very important to note that around that time in 2022, Ottawa was being occupied. There was a convoy that was downtown quite busy.

And I imagine part of the messaging is also understanding who you are sort of fighting against or trying to, you know, where those other messages are coming from.

And I'm curious, who do you point the finger at for some of the misinformation and disinformation around vaccine hesitancy for example?

You know, I've been working in the vaccine space for for a very long time, and I, I would I would be hesitant to actually say that a lot of the. Myths around vaccination have have changed substantially over the past few decades.

Even if we go back to the, you know, 1800s. And when vaccines started, a lot of the same concerns about vaccines that are raised today are similar.

So the the. The real difference in our society, I think, is where people are getting their information and how the information is flowing and who's being seen as trusted voices of information and what the motivations behind misinformation and disinformation is.

Dr. Arneson, very quickly, I do want to pivot a little bit about measles for last year.

That was the focus.

And, you know, there was hope that Ontario had it under control.

But there were two cases that were discovered in Ottawa, and I am curious about the conversation around exemptions, whether it's religious, philosophical, is that worsening the vaccine hesitancy?

Is that adding fuel to the fire?

So certainly vaccine hesitancy is the is is a cause of what we're seeing, the issue around people choosing not to vaccinate for measles, mumps, rubella is certainly a cause of why we're seeing people with measles and spread of measles within the province.

Now, what we're seeing is that people are not familiar with the disease and in many cases are not getting vaccinated.

And that's a number of a number of factors.

It's not always related to specific religious beliefs.

Again, it could be related to misinformation that people are hearing through social media or other other forms of communication.

And it could also be, in some cases, access issues when it comes to exemptions.

What we're talking about is in Ontario, the Immunisation of School Pupils Act, which is an act for reporting vaccines to attend school, which is an important tool in in trying to make sure that people are up to date.

But it's it's not necessarily a perfect tool.

People can choose those exemptions.

We haven't seen massive increases in exemptions.

However, you know, we do see challenges with people being able to report their records year over year and especially during the pandemic when school was disrupted for periods of time and getting that information and also people's access to healthcare services were disrupted.

We did see a decrease in in vaccination of some of these important immunisations that we're still seeing catch up with.

So really the the fundamental issue is getting people to understand the importance of routine vaccination and getting the vaccinations.

And there's a variety of, of, of barriers or reasons that that might not be happening as much as it once was.

We are going to leave it there.

Dr. Arneson, really appreciate your time and your input.

Thanks very much.