How can your family avoid a trip to the ER?

Public health champion says the answer is simpler than you think.

Kirsten Bauer - 26 May 2017

As an emergency physician and professor of public health, Louis Francescutti is no stranger to overcrowded emergency rooms. From binge drinking and distracted driving to workplace accidents and influenza outbreaks, he wants people to know that injury and disease can be prevented by the choices they make every day.

Francescutti's message is simple: Live smart. He says the trick to not "dropping dead healthy," is to avoid the need to make a trip to the emergency room in the first place.

"We're spending a lot of money on health care and we're not getting the results we want. It's time to regroup and do something differently," says Francescutti, former president of the Canadian Medical Association.

As founder of the HEROES program, a multimedia head and spinal-cord injury prevention project for teenagers, Francescutti is responsible for educating generations of Alberta teenagers on the perils of drunk driving. He is the founder of the Coalition for Cellphone-Free Driving and former director of the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research, and has lectured internationally to encourage more efforts to keep people safe.

Francescutti will share his latest recommendations on how to keep your family safe from emergency room trips at his rapid fire, free presentation called "Drop Dead Healthy," as part of the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry's Festival of Health on Saturday, June 3.

Learn more about this topic at the Festival of Health

Register here for your free ticket

ECHA 2-490 1 - 5 p.m.

Edmonton Clinic Health Academy,

North Campus, University of Alberta


Today's most critical health topics
delivered in rapid doses
by U of A's leading health experts
1 - 2 p.m.

Hands-on Health
Interactive displays
2 - 3 p.m. & 3:45 - 4:45 p.m.

Ask the Doctors
What have you always wanted to know but never dared to ask?
3 - 3:45 p.m.

More information available at uab.ca/healthfest.