Publications
The Arts and Health: Healthy Aging through the Arts project focused on a community-engaged approach in a Canadian context to improve health promotion services to seniors and people living with chronic conditions in the local health region and applying the learnings.
– Vancouver Coastal Health and Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation
A guide to Vancouver's Healthy City Strategy, unanimously approved by City Council in 2014.
A planning tool to help build community capacity in health promotion projects. The tool gives you a snapshot of where you are—and where you still might go—in building community capacity for your project.
– Public Health Agency of Canada
This paper by Tamarack Institutes’ Sylvia Cheuy (Consulting Director, Collective Impact) discusses community innovation as a particular form of social innovation that is place-based, within the specific geography of a community. She presents the critical leadership role communities play in generating the necessary innovations to address the challenges confronting us today.
The report estimates the current provincial and regional prevalence rates of three chronic disease risk factors: excess weight (obesity and overweight), physical inactivity, and tobacco smoking, as well as the direct health-care costs and indirect productivity losses associated with each of the risk factors. Understanding the current costs of these risk factors and how these costs might change in coming years can help inform both immediate and long-term planning.
– Provincial Health Services Authority
Features research focusing on impact of the physical environment, specifically focuse on children’s development
– Kimberly Kopko, Cornell University
Outlines the links between housing and health in a positive way, useful for many audiences.
– The Housing Centre
This guide provides a brief summary of current poverty reduction activities across Canada, a description of the role of the Region of Waterloo in poverty reduction, and an overview of the region’s corporate-wide Comprehensive Approach to Poverty Reduction.
– Region of Waterloo
A report that focuses on regional planning and the relevance of parks and greenspace.
– Alberta Recreation and Parks Association
In rural BC, it has been reported that the ‘boom and bust’ cycles of natural resource extraction development have been a significant factor in shaping the health inequities that are observed and experienced throughout the province. Accordingly, there is a strong desire to better assess and respond to the impacts of resource extraction and development on the social determinants of health (SDOH). This document seeks to assist local efforts by industry and other stakeholders in incorporating SDOH into managing and monitoring the impacts of natural resource extraction and development.
As part of a series of papers written in support of the Vibrant Communities Initiative, this paper explores the social role of local governments.
The Vibrant Communities Initiative supports the development of comprehensive community initiatives to address complex community problems, such as poverty.
– Sherri Torjman and Eric Leviten-Reid, Caledon Institute for Social Policy
This strategy takes a policy and environmental approach to encouraging healthy eating and physical activity in Nova Scotia.
- Province of Nova Scotia
For rural residents without a private vehicle, access to services is a significant barrier and an impediment to being active members of society. This resource describes the models and building blocks required for a co-ordinated approach in your community. - Rural Ontario Institute
This link to the University of Northern BC, Community Development Institute takes you to Housing related papers: from a review of Cottage Country housing issues in Norman Lake, to an Economic Development Framework for Interpreting Housing Markets in Small Towns in Canada.
- University of Northern BC, Community Development Institute
Food insecurity is the inadequate or insufficient access to food due to financial constraints.
It is a concept closely linked to household income – the lower the household income, the higher the risk of food insecurity. As there are physical, mental, and social consequences, food insecurity is not only an indicator of the economic well-being of both adults and children, it is also a direct social determinant of health.
