Cultural Competence

The court order, which will expire Nov. 27, 2020, prevents Dr. McKee from providing the 17-year-old with "counsel, advice or advocacy in preparation for, promotion of, or performing a double mastectomy or any surgery.”

Effective Nov. 2, 2020, the diagnosis of persistent and well-documented gender dysphoria is included in the list of criteria for MSI coverage for breast reduction.

With the second wave of COVID-19 in full swing, did the return to class for Canadian students help cause it or are cases rising in schools because of the second wave itself?

I think about certain patients, displaced from the certainties of their lives in their home countries. They have, for complicated reasons, chosen to leave the world they grew up in to make a new life in Canada. The dominant culture here is so foreign, so strange to them. Some are ready to embrace it and go forward, and some are stuck and cannot adjust.

The change came within 24 hours of Canada's Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam updating recommendations to say that masks with three layers—two cloth plus a filter—are ideal over two-layer face coverings.

The abilities to connect and communicate that such programs are meant to foster are all the more important in the pandemic's context.