The vision of CHANGE Health is to be one of Canada’s leading health protection and improvement not-for-profits for children, youth and families by empowering community members, educators, businesses, healthcare, and government to co-design solutions that advance the social determinants of health.  The CHANGE Centre will support families to learn and experience, or for most families, re-learn healthy living through programming that explores healthy nutrition, physical literacy and social connections. See Video

Background

Growing numbers of Canadians increasingly lead unhealthy lives due to both personal choices and the built environment of our communities. Whether this is the result of busy lifestyles, sitting in cars or offices or our increasing dependency on screens, the Canadian health situation is complex and requires the investment of diverse systems and citizen leaders. In the past, children and adults would spend several hours each week outdoors involved in both domestic duties and outdoor play! This is no longer the case. The disconnection with nature, food and our neighbourhood is contributing to increasing rates of mental health problems, chronic diseases and an obesity crisis. In Canada, like every other developed economy, we are responding to this crisis by spending increasing amounts of money on healthcare; although what we are really buying is disease care. Something has to change.  CHANGE Health is working to create a new collaborative model of health service delivery that supports preventive personalized and community-relevant care to Albertans. CHANGE in Parkland

Our Plan

The CHANGE Centre, a provincial innovation hub located in Parkland County on the Pembina River, will focus on both designing and testing new models of health, recreation and education relationships, partnerships and programming. Located on Treaty 6 land, the CHANGE Centre will be a joint-use, community-driven space stewarded by those involved in health, education and community. This allows CHANGE Health to expand its current work with Primary Care Networks, Municipalities, Universities, Recreation Centres and K-12 School Divisions.