Respondents to the study, conducted over eight months beginning in December 2010, told O’Campo they wanted to see consistently funded community agencies that can reduce the disparity by providing a wide range of health and social services, everything from after-school homework clubs to counseling services to job search workshops.

“You need to have sufficient funding to ensure the breadth of services,” said O’Campo, who heads up the hospital’s Centre for Research on Inner City Health. “The study participants also wanted to make sure the staff and the volunteers at those agencies had the resources they need in order that they be well managed.”

The study’s findings are supported by Catholic agencies.

“The study confirms what we’ve known for a long time,” said Lucia Furgiuele, Catholic Family Services of Toronto executive director, in an e-mail. “Cuts to community and social services are bad for our health.”

Agencies like Catholic Family Services disproportionately work with the poor and people at risk of poverty. Their services aim to even the playing field for families in distress.

“These programs are meant to keep us engaged, safe and healthy,” said Furgiuele. “And less likely to end up in more costly places like hospital emergency rooms, long-term care institutions or jails.”

There are economic implications when it comes to keeping community based services running and available, said Mark Creedon, Peel-Dufferin Catholic Family Services’ executive director.

“These are not peripheral or tangential things,” he said. “Anxiety and depression are the number one cause for people to miss work. It has surpassed back injuries. That has huge economic implications.”

One of the best investments a government can make is supporting counselling services for couples on the verge of a break-up, said Creedon. Divorce and separation are “the fastest route to poverty,” he said.

Money given to community non-profit agencies is best thought of as an investment, he added.

“Your payback is going to be enormous. My guess is you’re probably going to get three dollars back for every one dollar you invest.”

The growing disparity between rich and poor and even between middle class and poor is making the city less healthy, said O’Campo. Research shows that when a community is uniformly poor health outcomes are better than in richer communities with large variations in income.

“You can also be high income in an area that has very high levels of disparity and your high income does not protect you,” O’Campo said. “In fact, you have a worse risk of dying than somebody who is poor and lives in an area that is relatively equal.”

O’Campo’s research arrived just as funding for non-profit agencies became a hot topic at Toronto’s City Hall and in the provincial election campaign.