The first bit of news is that my term as acting director has been extended until June 30, 2003. During this time, I will follow through on the recommendations of the task force on the future of the Centre for Health Promotion by finding funding partners, setting up a new advisory board, and continuing to support existing initiatives of the Centre.

Over the last few months, we have been involved in many projects. One was the writing of part of a document on economic evaluation put out by the Prevention Dividend Project (thanks to Rick Edwards). Another was the development of a package of health promotion orientation materials for the Health Products and Food Branch of Health Canada (thanks to Daniel McSweeney and Brian Hyndman).

On the international front, I am very excited about the developments in Brazil. They are putting together a national health promotion policy that the Minister of Health Policy hopes to announce in November at the IUHPE/ORLA conference in São Paulo. They have asked the Centre to help them design a baseline survey of health promotion activities in municipalities across Brazil, in order to help them evaluate the implementation of their national health promotion policy over the next few years. Both the national policy and the implementation evaluation are major initiatives and I was thrilled to be invited to participate. Dr. Miguel Malo (health promotion focal point for PAHO in Brazil) and Dr. Socorro Lemos (coordinator of Health Promotion in the Ministry of Health Policy in Brazil) deserve kudos from everyone for their vision and persistence in making this happen. Reg Warren, Augusto Mathias and Juliana de Paula are part of the Canadian team supporting this stage of the evaluation process. We are also discussing the Centre’s involvement in a health promotion training initiative to support the policy implementation.

For me, other big international projects have been sitting on the scientific and technical advisory committee planning the Health Promotion Forum in Chile in October 2002 and on the core group for PAHO’s healthy municipality evaluation initiative. The healthy municipality evaluation initiative of PAHO is developing a participatory evaluation toolkit for use across the Americas and a document for policy-makers to persuade them to support evaluation.

Paulina Salamo contributed to the toolkit, and her move from the Centre to a position with CIDA in Ottawa has been great for her but has left a big gap here as we continue to develop our Latin American projects. Both of these initiatives have challenged my language abilities and I have been taking Spanish lessons since June in an effort to become more functional in both Spanish and Portuguese. In August, I met with colleagues from Cuba and I could understand much more than I could last year. I was also thrilled to find that I could understand Portuguese much better in September than I could in May! However, I am a very long way from filling Paulina’s shoes.

We are looking for ways to build closer ties to the MHSc program in the Department of Public Health Sciences. So, in addition to the rest of my Centre activities, I am the associate director of this program, a role Michael Goodstadt has played on our behalf in the past. We teach core courses and organize the student practicums. It is an ideal connection: the Centre works with its partners and associates in the community to find student placements.

Finally, I look forward to meeting all of you at the Annual General Meeting on December 5th. Have a great fall season!

We are making progress on finding agency partners for the Centre for Health Promotion -- and making good on our promise to create a community-university partnership for research and education. I hope to be able to announce in the new year who our partners are. Stay tuned!

The International Unit has worked closely with the Caribbean Program Coordination, Pan American Health Organisation (CPC/PAHO) to develop capacity in health promotion. Over the last year, Fran Perkins and Paulina Salamo worked with an advisory group and the University of The West Indies, Mona Campus, to develop modules for training in health promotion as a cross-cutting concept for health planning in health reform. They developed four modules: Concepts of Health and Health Promotion, Building Alliances for Healthy Public Policy, Health Planning and Programme development, and Health Promotion and Evaluating Health Plans and Programs. These modules were pilot-tested in June at a week-long training session in Barbados.

More recently the Canadian Society for International Health and the Hickling Corporation won a joint bid to "build in capacity and strengthen Health Monitoring and Program evaluation and National Health Promotion in Croatia." This is the public health component of a World Bank loan to reform and strengthen the Health Care System Project for Croatia. The health promotion section emphasizes the reduction of cardiovascular disease. This intense project will take place over the next few years. Fran Perkins will be taking the lead in health promotion training and capacity building and other CHP people will be involved as the project evolves.

As Suzanne has mentioned, Paulina Salamo has left the Centre to work for CIDA as a health specialist for the Americas Branch. Paulina is already sorely missed. Her work at the centre was exemplary and it is due mostly to her leadership and work in Chile and other areas of South America that the Centre has such a good reputation. We miss her and wish her the best of luck.

Work of the Canadian office of IUHPE/NARO continues to progress. Preparations are underway for conferences in Los Cruces, New Mexico (NARO conjoint) next year and Australia in 2003 (IUHPE) global. Irv Rootman is taking the lead on the North American initiative that is part of the global initiative on the effectiveness of health promotion.

Recently, Suzanne has spent a lot of time in South America. She has been on the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee that planned the October 2002 Health Promotion Forum in Chile (a follow-up to the International Health Promotion Conference held in Mexico in 2000). At the conference, countries in the Americas made statements about how they have responded to the Mexico Declaration and we hope that they will be making further commitments to implement health promotion strategies in the Chile Commitment. Many mayors attended and there were special sessions to promote healthy municipalities.

Suzanne has also been on PAHO’s Healthy Municipality Evaluation group, which met in Toronto at the end of September (with support from Health Canada). The group is preparing a participatory evaluation toolkit that draws substantially from Nina Wallerstein’s work in New Mexico and Brazil. Paulina Salamo also made a big contribution to this toolkit. The group is writing a document to persuade policy makers to evaluate their healthy municipality initiatives. This document was discussed in a small focus group at the Chile Forum in October. Final versions of both documents in all four languages of the Americas are expected in the spring.

The Brazilian government and PAHO in Brazil have asked the Centre to help them design a baseline survey of all 5500 municipalities in Brazil that will give them a snapshot of health promotion activities. It is impressive how quickly they are moving to implement this survey. Reg Warren, Suzanne Jackson, Juliana de Paula and Augusto Mathias are the Canadian team and Reg and Suzanne went down to Brasilia in September to discuss and design the first draft. The survey was revised and was pilot tested in October with the intention of sending out the survey in early November. It is expected that the Minister of Health Policy will announce the National Health Promotion Policy in November. There are plans to develop a qualitative study of a subsample of municipalities early in the new year and a follow-up survey in late 2003 to explore the impact of the policy announcement. It is a privilege to be part of this exciting initiative.

Suzanne is also co-principal investigator with Dr. Ligia de Salazar on an economic evaluation project to develop a conceptual framework and pilot test it in healthy municipalities in Canada and Columbia. This project has received funding from Centres for Disease Control in the USA and will be connected to the healthy municipalities evaluation research in the Americas led by PAHO. Over the next few months, the project coordinator will be hired and a workshop with experts from both countries will take place in the new year.

Fall has brought on a flurry of student-related activities at OTRU. The unit recognizes that involving students and graduates early in their careers is an essential strategy in developing a future cadre of researchers and practitioners with interest in and skills relevant to tobacco control.

The OTRU Graduate Studentships for Research in Tobacco Control Program was initiated in 2001 to increase the tobacco research capacity in Ontario. The studentships build on the network of tobacco researchers in Ontario and allow for research covering a wide variety of topic areas including interventions, policy, programs, and health effects. Ten studentships of $7,000 each are awarded in two rounds on a yearly basis, contingent on continued funding. The deadline for the first round of applications is October 31, 2002.

Since 1999, two OTRU Principal Investigators, Dr. Roberta Ferrence and Dr. Joanna Cohen, have offered the graduate-level course, Tobacco and Health: From Cells to Society, through the Graduate Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto. Using state-of-the-art videoconferencing technology, the course is being offered this year to students at the universities of Toronto, Waterloo, British Columbia and McGill, with plans for future expansion to other institutions. The course is an elective of the Collaborative Program in Addiction Studies (COPAS) at the University of Toronto.

Over the last few months, THCU has been hard at work updating our website. Please check out our homepage for the latest news about our workshops and resources (http://www.thcu.ca/) . Our information and resources section is full of new and interesting links related to our five mandate areas: health communication, planning, evaluation, policy development, and sustainability. Of note are our eleven health communication campaign scenarios, organized according to our 12-step process for communication campaign development (http://www.thcu.ca/infoandresources/health_communication.htm#11scen-text). While you’re visiting the site, please take a moment complete our feedback form -- we want this site to be as useful and user-friendly as possible and we need your feedback!

Briefly, CPIG was formed in order to support of the Recommendations of the Ontario Task Force on the Primary Prevention of Cancer (1995), particularly in the areas of environmental and occupational health. The Centre for Health Promotion was the secretariat for the Task Force, which had been commissioned by Ruth Grier when she was the provincial Minister of Health. Over the years it has met with various health leaders and activists, organised public meetings, and participated in conferences and the like.

In September 2002, the Cancer Prevention Interest Group (CPIG) together with the Toronto Cancer Prevention Coalition, Environmental and Occupational Working Group (TCPCE&OccWG), convened a meeting with high-level Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) representatives. Present were CEO Julie White, Fran Walsh, Diane Finkle, Valerie Hepburn and twelve members of CPIG and the TCPCE&OccWG.

Both groups were pleased with the CCS’s national policy statement calling for the use of the precautionary principle at a public meeting on pesticides in Caledon, Ontario earlier this year. Thus, we invited the CCS representatives to meet with us in the interests of working together to support our mutual concerns for primary prevention in the future. The meeting was chaired by Ruth Grier, a member of both groups. Here are some highlights of the discussion:

• CEO Julie White described the structure of the CSS and noted that provincial divisions set their own priorities within national policy. She explained that in the past year the CCS had been trying to consolidate materials across the organization, shifting from operating as "silos." The common set of objectives now includes research, prevention, advocacy, services for patients, and information.
• They have under-used their advocacy capacity in the past, but want to become more proactive. They are also considering a position statement regarding the precautionary principle on benzene and asbestos.
• The CCS has had a lot of flack from tobacco lobbyists over the years in response to their anti-smoking campaigns.
• Their educational work consists of public forums, leadership training and the like, using resources produced by others.
• There are four CCS units in Toronto alone, so leadership is important.
• The representatives of the Ontario Division present at the meeting were strongly supportive of the the Toronto Partnership for Pesticide Bylaws, which is an ongoing political process at City Hall to support the proposed policy of the Medical Officer of Health and the Chair of the Board of Health. That partnership includes the Ontario College of Family Physicians, the Registered Nurses Association, the Toronto Environmental Alliance (the principle organizers), the Canadian Environmental Law Association, Women's Healthy Environments, and. It is hoped that the Ontario division will officially support this important initiative in the near future. Fran Walsh, regional director of that division, noted that they could put pesticide information in the canvassers' kits.
• Other suggestions from the groups included selling only pesticide free daffodils in April (which was attempted but difficult last year), initiating prevention collaboration with many different cancer groups (such as colorectal cancer organization, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation, the Terry Fox Run), and labelling of pesticides in food.
• It was noted that the Canadian Cancer Advocacy Network (CCAN) is funded by the CCS, and that the website of the Canadian Health Network contains information on environmental and occupational health issues at http://www.cancer.ca.
• Another excellent website on prevention is http://www.stopcancer.org. Clearly, there is much to be done and all agreed that the more we can all cooperate in the future, the better.

The Healthy University Group has not met formally for over a year. It would be nice to restart the work of this group. Anyone interested in participating or chairing this group should contact Suzanne (suzanne.jackson@utoronto.ca). The Healthy U of T Awards program is being widely promoted this year (thanks Noelle) and background information and nomination forms are available on our website at http://www.utoronto.ca/chp/huniv.html. We hope to have many nominations and our usual presentation to the winners at the AGM.

The Canadian Consortium for Health Promotion Research is deep into discussions with Health Canada about possible 3-year funding (Consortium funding ended in October 2001). The Consortium has proven to be a valuable resource in Canada and we have been exploring partnership possibilities with both Health Canada and the Department of National Defense. All 14 member centres have faced funding difficulties and a solution at the national level would breathe new life into the Consortium. A new collaborative relationship with Health Canada is being explored where a mutual research agenda is part of the discussion. I hope that the Centre can play a role in the research program that results from this discussion.

In December 2000, the Centre for Health Promotion's "School Health Interest Group" merged with the OPHA Healthy Schools Workgroup and the Coalition of Ontario Agencies for School Health to form the Ontario Healthy Schools Coalition (OHSC). Barbara Ronson of the Centre for Health Promotion and Carol MacDougall of Toronto Public Health have been co-chairs of the coalition since then.

The OHSC is an Ontario-wide, broad-based coalition, with members from health units, school boards, hospitals, mental health agencies, universities, health-related organizations, education-related organizations, parents, and students. At a recent strategic planning day, we defined our vision: "every child and young person in Ontario will have the opportunity to be educated in a 'healthy school.’" A healthy school promotes the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of the whole school community and constantly strengthens its capacity as a healthy setting for living, learning, and working. The OHSC members feel it is essential that Ontario takes steps to make this vision a reality in our province and to keep up with the work of the World Health Organization's Global School Health Initiative that has been embraced by many countries (including Australia, 41 European countries, the United States, and Canada).

In partnership with key stakeholders who have an interest in the health and learning of the children and youth of Ontario, the OHSC will endeavour to

• raise awareness of the benefits and need for healthy schools,
• influence policy development and the provision of adequate public funding to guide the implementation of a healthy schools approach, and
• provide a forum to share new and ongoing initiatives across health, education, and related sectors.

Among the activities undertaken by the OHSC since its inception in 2001 are the submission of briefing notes to government task forces and committees; presentations at conferences (OPHEA, Health Promotion Ontario, OPHA, OTF); and the development of funding proposals, a three year plan, and terms of reference. We have also developed a Healthy Schools Ontario logo and are in the process of developing a brochure for continued advocacy and identification and have developed and delivered a powerpoint presentation explaining the concepts of Comprehensive School Health/Health Promoting Schools, the vision of our coalition, and recommendations for action, to leaders in health and education in all three political parties.

We recently drafted and submitted to three political parties a succinct Healthy Schools Ontario concrete proposal that identified the key pieces that need to be put in place in Ontario in order to effectively enhance schools as health-promoting settings. These were grounded in the experience of the European Network of Health Promoting Schools and the realities of Ontario. Seven initial steps are proposed: an overarching policy statement, a coordinating office, coordinating staff in every school board, a school profile tool, a healthy school team and coordinator in every school, adequate public health staff, and full implementation of the health and physical education curriculum. The Healthy Schools Ontario concrete proposal complements the Comprehensive School Guidance Program, Choices Into Action, introduced in 1999 for implementation in schools.

The OHSC now has an email distribution network of approximately 162 people, 45 of who are active members. An average of 18 people have been attending regular monthly meetings, approximately half by teleconference. The meetings serve as a sounding board for presenting and learning about projects and research related to school health across the province. We hear ongoing reports about a cross-national study on school health promotion by OISE/UT; the combined work of school boards and health departments in innovative regions such as Hastings Prince Edward County; a school-culture research project by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health; research in schools on healthy body image by the Hospital for Sick Children; the work of OPHEA, including its Active Schools Awards program; the work of the Canadian Association for School Health, for which we serve as the Ontario chapter; nutrition programs in schools developed by the Milk Marketing Board; injury prevention research in schools by St. Michael's Hospital and Think First Foundation; an innovative Friendship class program developed by George Hull Centre for Children and Families and Toronto Board of Education; a Newmarket Youth Health and Active Living project; publications about school health in academic journals by our members; and more.

The Centre is helping to conduct a research project designed to stimulate the development of a national program of research in the area of literacy and health. Irv Rootman, our former director now based at the Community Health Promotion Coalition of the University of Victoria, is leading this project.

The objectives of the research are to

• stimulate research on adult literacy and health in Canada,
• contribute to the development of research capacity in Canada on this topic,
• encourage and assist cooperation between researchers and literacy and health practitioners ,
• improve the dissemination and application of research findings in this field,
• encourage the training of future researchers in literacy and health,
• stimulate collaboration among researchers from different disciplines, and
• explore ways of using research to influence policy development in literacy and health.

These objectives are expected to be achieved through the following activities:

• establish advisory committee,
• conduct environmental scan and needs assessment,
• evaluate National Literacy and Health Program at CPHA,
• hold think tank/workshop,
• submit research proposals,
• develop a website and electronic newsletter,
• make presentations,
• develop training opportunities for graduate and postdoctoral students,
• evaluate proposed program of research, and
• develop plan for sustaining research program.

Irv successfully applied for SSHRC funding for this work with the following investigators and collaborators: Jim Frankish, U.B.C.; Deborah Gordon, C.P.H.A.; Margot Kaszap, Laval University; Heather Hemming, Acadia U; Paul Roberts, C.C.S.D.; Millicent Toombs, C.M.A.; and Ilona Kickbusch, Yale University.

Barbara Ronson has been serving as research coordinator at the Centre for Health Promotion and has been responsible for an Ontario environmental scan and needs assessment as well as for a national synthesis of needs assessment work across the country. Barry MacDonald is administering the project. Our neighbours Erica DiRuggiero and Linda Day at CIHR are involved in the national workshop and are helping to fund it.

To date, we have been successful in establishing an advisory committee (which includes Harvey Skinner from the Department of Public Health Sciences at U of T), creating a website at http://www.nlhp.cpha.ca, and completing the environmental scan and needs assessment through the work of four investigators across the country. A national workshop/think tank was held Oct. 27 to 28 in Ottawa, where the results of the environmental scan and needs assessment were presented and research priorities were established. Our associate Rick Wilson is involved in evaluating the National Literacy and Health Program and has developed a logic model for this purpose. The Faculty of Pharmacy at U of T is an example of one group that has taken an interest in this project and they have begun to design research proposals related to the area. Many other practitioners, policy makers, researchers and service providers have taken an interest in the project through participation in key informant interviews and focus groups. The project is off to a great start and one that we should be proud of.

Join us to celebrate a year of growth and change at our 12th AGM.

We hope to feature a guest speaker and we will notify you when we have someone confirmed. As usual, we will provide the CHP Annual Report, lots of time for networking, the healthy U of T Awards, and the latest news about the Centre. See you there!

Please RSVP to 416-978-2182 or centre.healthpromotion@utoronto.ca .