Health Nexus Redefining Our Role, Expanding Our Reach 08-09 Annual Report
Executive Message
2008/2009 was our first year as the renamed Health Nexus / Nexus Santé. With our new name we expand upon our clearinghouse roles, aiming to be the health promotion place to go for the knowledge, resources and networks people need. During the year we worked with colleagues throughout Canada, to enhance health promotion skills, knowledge, resources, leadership and participation opportunities.As long-standing champions of using knowledge about determinants of health to escalate practical actions to improve population health equity, we welcomed the mid-year rallying call of the World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health to close the gap in health status between the world’s most and least advantaged within a generation. The report, and Canada’s contributions to it, reaffirmed our commitment to our priorities of improving early child health, reducing health inequity and preventing chronic diseases.
One of this year’s highlights was expanding our partnerships with First Nations, Métis and Inuit organizations and communities. As part of piloting innovative methods to analyze intentional networks, we’re identifying a hunger to improve effectiveness of partnerships. Clients appreciated our increased use of video and web-conferencing to provide education, and gave us enthusiastic feedback to events and new publications.
We ended 2008/09 with revenue losses, such that in 2009 we have, sadly, reduced our efforts to prevent chronic diseases and closed the secretariat of the Ontario Health Promotion Resource System. Funding for Health Nexus activities is an ongoing concern for the organization. Over the next year we will be working actively with funders, governments, community organizations and businesses to strengthen investments in our services in health promotion and population health for the benefit of Canadians.
