For chronic disease we have a number of surveillance systems in place. We have paid a lot of attention to them in terms of integrating them so that we get information on not only the disease outcomes themselves but also the risk factors for the disease and some of the conditions that are important to developing disease as well.
Our major surveillance program for chronic disease is called the Canadian chronic disease surveillance system. It's a surveillance system that allows us to work with provincial and territorial governments and gather information from their health systems around risk factors for chronic disease and trends in chronic disease over time.
That's a core function that we play. Each year we produce in-depth reports on various aspects of chronic disease to feed back to provincial and territorial governments and to national health organizations, as well as to our own government, so that we can use this information to make decisions. For example, next month we'll be issuing the first comprehensive report on diabetes in Canada. It will look at the full range of diabetes from the perspective of the factors that influence its development--obesity, poor nutrition, physical inactivity--as well as what's happening in the care system around diabetes control and management.
These surveillance products are widely distributed. We use them extensively to inform and target policies and programs. Provincial and territorial governments are the main users of our products, but non-governmental organizations, such as the Canadian Diabetes Association, also use these products to help them understand where they need to be investing their resources, what areas across the country are most vulnerable. For instance, we know our first nations, our aboriginal populations, are highly vulnerable to diabetes and other chronic diseases. We use those surveillance reports to shine a light on where the real problem areas are and how we can best address them.