I will begin. Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity to present today. We are presenting, as you say, on the very important topic of health promotion and disease prevention.
First a little bit about who we are. My name is Jane Maloney and I am the chairperson of the Canadian Alliance of Community Health Centre Associations, CACHCA for short.
CACHCA provides support to community health centres and their provincially based associations across Canada. Currently there are over 300 community health centres across Canada, although they go by several different names from province to province. For instance, this includes centres like Quebec's CLSCs, Saskatchewan's cooperative community clinics such as the Saskatoon Community Clinic, and Ontario's community health centres like the Oshawa Community Health Centre and the Barry Community Health Centre.
We'll describe for you, in a few moments, the main characteristics of community health centres and what unites them across the country. This is important because we know that it is the integration of these core characteristics at the level of front-line primary health care services that provides some of the greatest examples of success in preventing disease and improving health for Canadians and in other countries.
This is especially true for individuals and communities facing complex health issues and barriers to accessing care and support. We believe that expanding the community health centre model and approach offers one of the best opportunities within our health system to improve health promotion, disease prevention, and health outcomes across the country.
The main objective of our association, CACHCA, is to work for improved health and health care services for individuals and families in communities across the country. One of the main ways we do this is by helping governments and regional health authorities to expand access to community health centres, as a cost-effective and successful method for delivering primary health care and improving health outcomes.
In addition to being the current chairperson of Canada's community health centre association, I am the executive director of one such centre, the North End Community Health Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My colleague, Scott Wolfe, acts as our federal coordinator based out of Toronto.
In terms of grounding our recommendations to this committee, we believe that any serious effort to reduce the incidence of disease and to improve the health of Canadians must include a three-pronged approach. We see all of these three areas as essential.
First is the investment in social and environmental protections against illness and disease—what are termed the social determinants of health. This includes government policy to reduce poverty across Canada, to ensure adequate housing and food security for all Canadians, and to prevent the overwhelming impact of other forms of social inequity on the health of all Canadians.
Canada's chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Butler-Jones, is among the overwhelming consensus of health experts around the world, including the World Health Organization, who have identified improved country-level action on the social determinants of health as a top priority to improve health and ensure the sustainability of high-quality health care systems.
The second area is improved intersectoral collaboration among governments and government agencies. This would include legislation, structures, and processes to ensure that government collaboration occurs across sectors and ministries, with a view to ensuring that public policy and service planning are considered from the perspective of their potential impact on the health of Canadians. Here we cite the Province of Quebec's health in all policies legislation, or HiAP, and the Ontario government's cabinet-level poverty reduction strategy, as two examples of action in this area.
The third area is a shift in the planning and funding of our federal and provincial health systems to ensure equitable access for all Canadians to appropriate primary health care. This must include increased and more equitable access to integrated person-centred community health centres. Community health centres provide high-quality, team-based care that is integrated with health promotion programs and community development initiatives.These services offer more than a “build it and they will come” approach by partnering with the community to deliver locally relevant services, programs, and supports that address individual and family needs. Illness prevention and health promotion are intrinsic to this integrated approach.
Again, the three prongs of an effective health promotion and disease prevention approach would include investment in addressing the social determinants of health; increased intersectoral collaboration; and improved access to equitable and comprehensive primary health care through our community health centres.
We would be pleased to help ensure that the members of this committee have access to Canadian and global reports that provide irrefutable evidence on the importance of action on the social determinants of health. These include the 2010 annual report of Canada's chief medical officer of health and the World Health Organization's 2008 World Health Report, which calls for global commitment to addressing the social determinants of health at local and country levels.
Our association joins many others in emphasizing the urgency of the action required from the Canadian government in heeding the recommendations contained within these reports.
That said, we would like to dedicate the remainder of our time today to the third area of these three areas for action that we have described. This is the need for federal and provincial governments to increase equitable access to comprehensive primary health care across Canada through community health centres as a key means of improving health promotion and disease prevention.