Health Matters: Ontario announces new medical school with York University partnership

I’m Catherine Ward with your top health headlines. Right now, Canadians view measles as more dangerous than the flu or COVID-19, according to Ipsos polling for Global News. The poll also found that people have more trust in the safety of the measles vaccine in comparison to shots for either COVID or influenza. However, the data also shows 27% of people believe humans don’t need vaccines to build immunity and 23% are afraid to bring up the topic of vaccines with friends and family. We now see that this is a fault line that exists. Continually. Now we’ve got 3 and 10 who believe that vaccines simply aren’t necessary anymore. In general, it is younger men who are more likely to believe that we have that natural immunity that we don’t need to be introducing vaccines into our system in order to build immunity. Ontario is getting a new medical school focused specifically on training family doctors. The Ford government announced plans to partner with York University in Vaughan ON in Tuesday’s budget. It didn’t include details on the number of undergrad and graduate places it hopes to offer. The Ontario College of Family Physicians has said 2.3 million people in the province. Don’t have a family doctor? A new survey estimates about 10% of Canadian adults are using a GLP one type drug such as Ozempic or We Go V Researchers at Dalhousie University estimate that translates to about 900,000 to 1.4 million people. While the majority said they’re using the drugs to manage type 2 diabetes, more than 1/4 are using them strictly for weight loss. The researchers say more people using such drugs may impact the food industry over the long term. With users buying less junk food, going to restaurants less often and buying fewer groceries overall. You may find the fountain of youth in your sleep. New research has found people who got less sleep in the previous month felt older than people who did get their beauty rest. The researchers found a poor night’s sleep added ten years to how old people felt. And conversely, getting enough shut eye promotes a more active lifestyle. Those are the top health stories right now. For Morgan, head to globalnews.ca. I’m Catherine Ward.