Proactive approaches to supporting families’ physical and mental health are incredibly important. When families have the right support, our communities and country become healthier.
Our health and nutrition work focuses on improving a range of health outcomes for Canada’s diverse families. From healthy eating to childhood vaccination, we help family support centres meet families where they are and promote positive health outcomes in their community.
AVA (Alliance against Violence and Adversity) is a health research training platform that is creating the capacity to transform community health and social services to promote health and wellness of girls and women at-risk or affected by violence and adversity over the life-cycle.
The AVA project is led by the University of Calgary. As a community partner on the project, we: participate in the project’s working group; contribute to strategy development, management, and evaluation, and provide mentorship and internship opportunities. Together with partners across the country, we are contributing to better health outcomes for women.
In the fall and winter, flu and other respiratory illnesses increased significantly. At the same time, the Canadian population was behind on routine vaccinations. To help Canadian families stay healthy, we provided family support practitioners with necessary tools and information to become vaccine promotors in their communities.
In partnership with Eastern Ontario Health Unit and Solutions for Kids in Pain we: 1) Identified culturally appropriate resources that improve vaccine literacy and promote positive messaging about vaccination to families, and 2) Educated community-based service providers, thereby improving their vaccine literacy to address vaccine hesitancy and barriers among the individuals they serve.
This project was funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
In this project, we are translating the Healthy Together program materials and facilitator training course into French, to develop a bilingual program delivery model. We will also be offering a limited number of free seats in the newly translated Healthy Together facilitator training course to bilingual/francophone staff in our memers’ centres. We look forward to expanding this incredible, evidence-based program to more family support centres in Canada!
Funded by the Government of Canada.
If you’d like more information on any of our projects, please contact us at info@familiescanada.ca.