How can we create better habits and supports that keep people healthy longer?

One should never use the word “crusade” lightly, but if you’ve ever watched someone battle against deeply entrenched systems, close-mindedness, or worst of all, indifference, then there’s no better word for what needs doing. There is unfinished business that I must pick up, and sure as night follows day, there will be fresh challenges too. In the months ahead, I’ll be taking up the crusades that still call out and the ones just beginning to stir.

One of the campaigns I am positioned to champion is around vitamin C. It’s close to my heart, and readers may know why that has two meanings. For one, I’m a second-generation advocate for higher doses of supplementation with C. In this sense, it’s a heartfelt calling. For another, I feel compelled to draw linkages between vitamin C and heart health, a pairing that too few understand. I’m not interested in the minimal doses of C found in most multivitamins or recommended by outdated public guidelines. My focus will be higher therapeutic use that can support immunity, cardiovascular health, and recovery from serious illness. There’s good science here, and there’s plenty of lived experience. What’s missing is a willingness on the part of regulators and policymakers to acknowledge that the current monograph is out of step with both. I intend to work diligently to change that. It won’t be easy, but it’s time to bring clarity, credibility, and a little pressure to a conversation that has stalled for far too long.

Another continuing campaign will be palliative pain management. Too many people, especially older adults, are still dying in unnecessary pain. Our healthcare system is structured to treat and intervene, but it often fails when comfort becomes the goal. We need a wider public conversation about the right to: effective, compassionate pain care in life’s final chapter, and not just in theory, but in practice, policy, and training. The Gifford-Jones professorship and supporting funds at the University of Toronto are helping shift how we think about dignity, choice, and the quality of a person’s last days.

Then there’s the battle against “selective skepticism.” We are right to question miracle cures and misleading marketing, but we must also apply that same scrutiny to the slow-moving machinery of official advice, especially when it fails to keep pace with new evidence or refuses to acknowledge natural therapies as legitimate options. This is where I hope to be helpful. I hope to cut through the noise with a clear-eyed view of what’s actually working for people, and why it matters.

A healthy amount of my future focus will be on prevention. How can we create better habits and supports that keep people healthy longer? Nutritional supplementation. Movement. Sleep. Stress reduction. These may sound basic, but they are anything but. Preventive health isn’t glamorous, and it’s rarely incentivized, but I believe it’s the foundation of sustainable healthcare. The more people understand it, the more empowered they’ll be to act. I truly worry, for us all, about the people who could be healthy, but through their own folly are falling ill. That’s the societal disease we don’t want the healthcare system chasing.

Finally, I’ll be advocating for respect for the individual in every healthcare decision. That means better access to information, more open conversations between patients and practitioners, and a culture that values curiosity over compliance. Let’s reduce the occasions when it is said, “I just wish someone had told me this earlier.”

These are just the first few campaigns. I’m sure others will emerge along the way, but for now, such are the hills I’m planning to climb.