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Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse

Grantee
Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse
Program
Children's Agenda
Project
Developing a Social and Economic Inclusion Toolkit for Ontario
Website
www.opc.on.ca

The Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse has always been a leader in health promotion, bringing new ideas and resources to practitioners in a diversity of situations across the province.  We were intrigued by the work the Laidlaw Foundation was doing to bring the social and economic inclusion concept to Canada and were pleased to be approached by the Foundation, along with Health Canada, to develop a project that would define inclusion in the Canadian context and develop tools for individuals and communities to create strategies for inclusion.

I believed this was important work because of my background and experience.   I spent twenty years at Toronto Public Health working with marginalized populations – refugees, immigrants, street kids, drug users – trying to create opportunities for them to participate in decisions and actions to improve their health.  Over the last seven or eight years much of that work was taken apart by government strategies that, at base, were exclusive.  I was dismayed to see and hear the people I worked with demonized by senior political figures – kids on the street were suddenly illegal; poor women were told to eat tuna from dented cans; refugees became cheaters.  Of course, we now know that those same political leaders and their aides were feasting at the finest restaurants and holidaying at the best resorts, all at the taxpayers’ expense.  I guess they were the demons after all.

A new spirit seemed to rush over Ontario last year.  We were happy to be starting a project with the support of the Laidlaw Foundation and Health Canada to define inclusion and create those important tools.  We gathered together health and social scientists and activists into our Provincial Advisory Group and contracted with three diverse sites in Ontario to test our ideas with ordinary people.  We were determined to bring inclusion from the conceptual heavens to the real world of health and social practice.

We’ve had a whirlwind year.  The definition developed through hours of meetings and seen by dozens of informants is simple and useful: An inclusive society promotes human and social development by creating both the feeling of belonging and the reality of belonging.  We are building television ads, brochures, posters, and a workbook around this simple definition – showing people that inclusion will make them healthier and make society stronger, too.

We didn’t expect results so soon, but word is getting out.  A number of sister projects funded by Health Canada have adopted our definition in their work.  I was asked to address the board of the Ontario Public Health Association on our definition and they hope to develop a committee with our definition as a starting point and frame of reference.  I shared the definition with the Ontario Medical Officer of Health and she has agreed to address a conference on inclusion and population health.  Connie Clement, the executive director of the Ontario Prevention Clearinghouse, is making a presentation on inclusion to an international conference on health promotion in Australia. 

I can remember working on the original group that came up with the Healthy City concept in the early eighties.  We met and debated -- like our own Provincial Advisory Group -- and eventually came up with a concept that swept across the world like a bright beam.  There are health city offices in most of the major cities of the world now. 

We have the same hope for inclusion.  Canada is again the leader, bringing a new policy and practice tool to life, thanks to a great extent to the pioneering work of the Laidlaw Foundation.

Michael Fay
Developing Tools for an Inclusive Ontario

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