Alliance wants healthy living strategy to consider people with disability

Community Action, April 14, 2003

OTTAWA -- The Active Living Alliance for Canadians with a Disability plans to involve itself in the federal government's process that will result in a national Healthy Living Strategy. The Alliance is determined to ensure disability issues are taken into consideration.

The federal government is concerned with an epidemic of overweight, unfit Canadians. The strategy will concentrate on active living and nutrition and their correlation to healthy body weights. The goal of the Healthy Living Strategy is to encourage and support positive health choices.

The Active Living Alliance is committed to influencing the Healthy Living Strategy from the start. "So often, disability issues are an afterthought" an Alliance statement complains.

Key considerations of the Alliance include:

* people with disabilities in all regions, in all economic situations, in all language groups, in all ethnic groups and of all ages;

* disability is an experience that will touch most Canadians at some point during their lives.

"A successful Healthy Living Strategy will build a strong social support network that would connect and encourage persons with disabilities to become active within their community." The Alliance claims that health professionals often prescribe rest and medication to their patients with disabilities. A health care provider, who equates disability and difference with dysfunction and illness, invalidates people with disabilities.