Planned Sessions
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Advocacy from the Ground Up: Giving Voice to Lived Experience This session will offer conference delegates the opportunity to engage with “voices from the street” and to dialogue with people whose lives reflect the urgent requirement for action on the determinants of health. Speakers from a number of local agencies will address the question “What does it take to create social change that improves health?” The process of knowledge exchange with delegates will likely generate many related questions: What are the ingredients that enable empowerment of local voices? How do health policies and systems have to change to include these voices? What is the role of community health professionals in supporting local advocacy? What are the connections between food security, poverty and mental health in systems change? Bring your questions and join the dialogue! |
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Environmental Health and Built Environments We are 80% urban and spend 90% of our time indoors. Thus the physical and built environment is our ‘natural’ environment – the buildings where we spend time (home, school, workplace, etc. – the settings of everyday life) as well as the urban settings in which those buildings are located. This session will provide an overall context on how the built environment affects health and influences equity. Specifically, we will focus on how the buildings we live in, and the urban form, affect our health from both gender and equity perspectives. |
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Equitable Public Engagement This session will explore the importance of public engagement to ethical public health decision-making. Public engagement can serve many goals, including giving voice to groups traditionally disadvantaged in society and seeking policy input from diverse members of the public. Participants will discuss how material from public engagements can inform policy and practice, consider the means of effectively doing so, and assess when such influence is legitimate or inappropriate. Speakers at this session will provide an introduction to public engagement and share insight from specific stakeholder perspectives whose voices are not always heard and incorporated in public health decision-making. Participants in this session will be encouraged to interact with the speakers to consider how to integrate diverse public perspectives in an equitable manner into their work. |
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The Farm to Fork Continuum, Food Security and Safety Challenges in the 21st Century This session will address current food safety and security issues and offer thoughts on how to address them in a systemic way in Canada. Recent events like the 2008 listeria outbreak clearly exposed deficiencies in both the food processing industry and regulatory agencies. |
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From H1N1 to Health Equity: Knowledge Exchange, Risk Communications and Decision-making The recent H1N1 pandemic experience at all levels of governance has brought forward learnings that can be applied to other domains of public health such as knowledge exchange and risk communications. The adaptation of influenza pandemic plans to the real world experience of an emerging outbreak revealed system-wide strengths and weaknesses. These were often most evident in the interplay between evidence-informed decisions and the various platforms through which risk to public health was communicated. As the public health community continues its ongoing effort to reduce health disparities and promote equity, we can benefit from reflecting on many of the questions raised about H1N1 and how these shaped the public communication and the broader conversation: Why are some groups more at risk than others? What is the benefit to the whole population of targeted interventions? What are the implications for service delivery in assessing differential risk? A diverse panel of expert presenters will consider these issues and help build the bridge from H1N1 to health equity. |
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Health through the Lifecourse: What Are We Trying to Measure, and Do We Have the Data? Recognizing the strong impact of early child development on adult life trajectories and lifecourse, it is imperative that public health practitioners and governments recognize disparities in the nurturing environments throughout the pathway. This will impact differently at different ages and stages of life. Inequities in ECD and throughout the lifecourse translate into vastly different life chances for children, youth and adults. These differences remain with the population throughout their lifecourse, and affect the health of all Canadians. This session will address health throughout lifecourse events, from the perspective of what’s important to measure, what can we measure, and what sources of data can we use to measure outcomes. What is the present, what is the future, and what do we need to do to ensure that the research agenda meets the needs of both the scientists and the decision-makers. Do we really need cellular-level data, or are the social determinants of health “where it’s at” when it comes to changing the long-term outcomes of our population? |
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Intersectoral Action: From Rhetoric to Reality In order to improve population health and promote health equity, public health interventions need to be implemented not only in the health sector but in other sectors such as education, environment and labour. For example, school health programs are implemented in the education sector. Speakers with concrete experience at local, provincial, national, and international levels will discuss innovative approaches and the challenges faced through intersectoral efforts. Current interdisciplinary research to enhance our understanding of effective intersectoral action will also be discussed. |
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Into the Future: Zoonotic Diseases and the Health of Canadians This session will explore the current state of knowledge of the continuing evolution of novel zoonotic diseases and more classical diseases transmitted to new susceptible populations from companion animals. The risk of exposure to infectious agents from animals and the magnitude of the response can vary considerably between individuals and among populations in each one of these categories. The session will engender a robust discussion of these categories, the benefits of interactions with animals, the public health implications of zoonotic infectious diseases, and strategies for prevention. |
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Injury Prevention The toll of injuries in Canada is staggering. Injuries result in more than three million people going to emergency rooms each year for treatment. Most of these injuries are both predictable and preventable. Provincial governments are beginning to recognize the importance of this issue and looking toward the prevention of injuries as one means of containing health care costs and sustaining the health system. Nationally, there are four organizations working for unintentional injury prevention: Safe Kids, Smart Risk, Think First, and Safe Communities. This session will explore the ways these organizations are working together to “sing with one voice” through knowledge exchange, stakeholder engagement, media and communication, and fund development. |
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Mental Health and Mental Illness: What Does the Next Generation Have to Say? Mental illness touches most Canadians, either directly or indirectly, across the lifecourse. Children and youth are particularly vulnerable, yet often we neglect to reach out and listen to their voices when discussing how best to meet their needs. This session will focus on the need for meaningful partnerships with youth to mobilize public health professionals and take action on the issue of mental illness. To understand the youth perspective and to celebrate their strengths, this session will include representatives from The New Mentality – a youth-driven network. They will discuss what needs to change to enable better support for those with mental illness, as well as to encourage the establishment of mentally healthy communities. This session will also include a discussion on school-based approaches to mental health promotion and intervention, and will outline strategies being developed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada to combat stigma and discrimination. Young people are important partners in all of these initiatives. |
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National Collaborating Centres for Public Health Small Drinking Water Systems Project The National Collaborating Centres (NCCs) for Public Health are undertaking a collective project on small drinking water systems (SDWS) in Canada with the intent of improving these systems by providing the necessary evidence to inform policy and practice. Various methods have been employed to solicit input regarding project direction from front-line professionals, practitioners, policy-makers, Aboriginal organizations and communities, local drinking water officers and other experts in the matter. From these consultations, we identified knowledge gaps that the NCCs can help fill. We will discuss progress of the project which will include an overview of the following subjects:
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Practical Strategies for Developing Programs to Promote Health and Reduce Inequalities The goal of this workshop is to provide insight regarding the use of a population health lens to promote health and to reduce health inequalities. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
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Public Health and Ecological Sustainability: Past, Present and Future The links between public health and what was then called ‘conservation’ were explored100 years ago in Canada by the Commission on Conservation. Almost 20 years ago, CPHA addressed the health implications of global ecosystem changes in a 1992 report on Human and Ecosystem Health. Yet we face a growing ecological crisis that presents a significant public health threat, not only in terms of climate and other atmospheric changes but also pollution and ecotoxicity, non-renewable and renewable resource depletion, and loss of habitat, species and biodiversity. In this session we will briefly re-visit the work of the Commission on Conservation, update the situation since CPHA’s 1992 report, explore the current state of the planet and the health implications of current trends in global ecological change, identify hopeful options, and engage participants in a discussion of what public health practitioners in Canada need to do in response. |
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Public Health Human Resources Building effective and efficient public health systems is a focus of national and global workforce development initiatives. To create and ensure a strong public health system, competent and skilled public health professionals are essential, along with strong organizations and leadership at all levels. This session will focus on how competent public health systems and organizations contribute to a competent workforce. The importance of organizational readiness and leadership competencies will be highlighted to support public health competencies. A summary of the current use of competencies to strengthen public health human resources in Canada will be presented. Practical, front-line examples of how public health organizations are building strong, healthy workplaces by integrating competencies will be demonstrated. |
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Public Health Policy Workshop: Public Health and Primary Health Care Coordination Several primary health care and public health collaboration problems were highlighted by the H1N1 outbreak. While there were problems for immunization of high-risk patients in a timely fashion and problems organizing flu assessment clinics, there were some parts of the country where these problems were overcome. As such, the goals of this workshop would be: to identify the main barriers and facilitating factors for public health collaboration with primary health care; to examine some case studies of public health and primary health care collaboration; and to deepen our understanding of frameworks for public policy analysis. |
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Social Determinants of Health from a First Nations, Inuit and Métis Perspective This panel presentation will explore the social determinants of health from the perspectives of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Over the past few years, researchers have been studying the impact of many determinants of health on First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples in Canada. The panel will highlight the implications of some of these research findings in relation to the health of the three indigenous populations of Canada. Specifically, the social determinants of gender and women’s health, early child development and the environment will be presented as concrete examples where evidence can be used to inform policy decisions supportive of health, at all levels of government. Panelists will discuss gender and women’s health in relation to First Nations communities; early child development from a Métis perspective; and the environment and nutrition security from the perspective of the Inuit. Participants will be encouraged to share their expertise, identify opportunities and propose specific public health policy and program interventions. The strengths and challenges of working within a social determinants of health framework will be explored. |
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Social Media – An Opportunity for Chronic Disease Prevention: The Future Is Now The advancement of information technologies and the emergence of social media provide new opportunities for public health professionals. This session will explore the phenomena of social media and related web technologies, their application and the ways in which social media can enhance knowledge transfer and uptake for both the general public and within targeted population groups. Three Canadian thought leaders will:
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