Economic Club of Canada

Event Details

The Cost of Diabetes in Ontario

Michael Cloutier

President and CEO
Canadian Diabetes Association Profile

September 8, 2010
7:45 am - 9:30 am

The Sutton Place Hotel
955 Bay Street, Toronto

The Association’s newly appointed CEO, Michael Cloutier, will announce key findings on the prevalence and financial cost of diabetes in Ontario derived through the Association’s new Ontario Diabetes Cost Model (ODCM), revealing the significant increase of diabetes prevalence and financial cost facing Ontario over the next decade. In consideration of these findings, Mr. Cloutier will comment on the impact and challenges that the current Ontario Diabetes Strategy will face in confronting the burden of diabetes in the province, and recommend opportunities for strategic action to contain and reduce the prevalence of diabetes and its economic burden on all of us.

In November of 2009, the Canadian Diabetes Association released An Economic Tsunami: The Cost of Diabetes in Canada, highlighting the dramatic increase in the prevalence and financial cost of diabetes in Canada over the last decade and providing a sobering view of the outlook for the next decade. This year, the CDA has devoted energies and resources to adapting the cost model used in the Economic Tsunami report to provide an assessment of the cost of diabetes at the provincial level.

The Ontario Diabetes Cost Model was designed by Dr. Robin Somerville, Director of The Centre for Spatial Economics. As a tool for analyzing the burden of diabetes in Ontario, the ODCM can project the costs, incidence and prevalence of the disease, as well as the co-morbidities common among people with diabetes; Further, it has been developed to determine, where efficacy data exists, the financial cost benefit of initiatives designed to delay or prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes, and to reduce the occurrence and severity of complications arising from the disease for persons with diabetes. With this Model, Canadians can for the first time understand the true health and economic costs of diabetes in Canada using Canadian data.