The work currently under way in our office to provide health professionals both with the latest nutrition advice related to prenatal nutrition and infant-feeding guidelines are examples of how our office uses best practices to support and promote healthy eating through the lifespan of Canadians.
We have recently revised our gestational weight gain guidelines for health professionals, and will soon be launching consumer materials to help both health professionals and expectant mothers manage weight gain during pregnancy. Reaching out to other groups, such as health professionals, researchers, policy-makers, and academics, is a way by which we aim to increase our efforts and to maximize their potential. Action to improve nutrition is a shared responsibility--picking up on what my colleague Kim Elmslie was saying--and working collaboratively with a broad range of partners and stakeholders is key to our efforts to improve the nutritional health of Canadians.
The office of nutrition policy and promotion provides leadership and coordination to the federal-provincial-territorial group on nutrition, which brings together professionals working in nutrition policy and program development in federal, provincial, and territorial governments to advance national healthy eating efforts. Through our network on healthy eating, which includes consumer groups, voluntary health organizations, industry representatives, and other non-governmental organizations, we aim to enhance collaboration, cooperation, and alignment of efforts to support healthy eating in Canada.
The office of nutrition policy and promotion has initiated and led the development of many policies and initiatives that focus on improving the nutritional health of the population. The best-known of these, of course, is Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide, which was released in 2008. It really serves as a policy document and underpins nutrition and health policies, standards, education programs, and meal planning initiatives across the country.
Other major Health Canada endeavours include the analysis and sharing of nutrition data from the Canadian community health survey; our nutrition labelling education initiatives, such as the nutrition facts education campaign; the promotion of healthy eating through, for example, the “Eat Well and Be Active” educational tool kit; and policy-related work to support broader Government of Canada initiatives, such as the healthy living strategy.
Population health interventions call for collaboration across all sectors and levels. Our most recent public education initiative, the nutrition facts education campaign, is an example of how stakeholders who share responsibility for healthy eating promotion--the food industry, health professional associations, and non-governmental organizations--can work together. This campaign is being done in collaboration with Food and Consumer Products of Canada, which is the largest industry association in Canada representing the food and consumer products industry.
The campaign aims to increase Canadians' understanding and use of the nutrition facts table to help them make informed food choices. It's a multi-faceted education campaign that uses various means to provide messages to consumers, including food packages in the retail setting, national television and print advertising, the Health Canada website, and social media.
You may have seen some of the TV commercials that are running right now, and that will be running for the next couple of months. The print ads have been going for a couple of months now.
Switching over to the provinces and territories, we are talking with the provinces and territories about the possibility of creating consistent school food guidelines across Canada. Working with our provincial-territorial colleagues and the Public Health Agency of Canada, we've released a literature review that outlines the current state of cooking and food preparation skills and the implications on nutrition health.
This release was also accompanied by a case study that profiles 13 Canadian and two international programs aimed at improving cooking and food preparation skills among children and families. It's a guide for individuals and organizations to develop cooking and food-skill programs in their own communities.
The Eat Well and Be Active educational toolkit developed with our colleagues at the Public Health Agency of Canada is another example of our collaborative efforts. The toolkit includes the “Eat Well and be Active Every Day” education poster, resources, and downloadable activity plans, and it's intended for use by health educators to increase Canadians' knowledge about healthy eating and physical activity and encourage them to take actions to maintain and improve their health.
As Kim Elmslie has already talked about, in September the FPT Ministers of Health endorsed the framework document entitled “Curbing Childhood Obesity: A Federal, Provincial and Territorial Framework for Action to Promote Healthy Weights”. One of the key policy priorities of this framework is increasing the availability and accessibility of nutritious foods.
I'm chairing right now an FPT task team that has been created to recommend concrete actions to increase access and availability of nutritious foods--