CATCH Canada

By Steve Lusk, CATCH Representative in Canada

I have just returned from Ottawa where I met with Marie DesMeules, the Director of Evidence and Risk Assessment Division of the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control. It is a division of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

CATCH will now be considered a Best Practices Intervention related to childhood obesity and the program details will be posted on the Canadian Best Practices Portal for Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention.

We discussed the opportunity of using CATCH as a partner for knowledge exchange relating to childhood obesity in a community public health and school health setting. What they hope to accomplish is to link those who use their web based tool to those who can provide solutions to the issue and act as a clearing house for information. They want to translate best practices into real solutions and interventions. They will be launching a pilot in November into the effectiveness of the tool and want to use CATCH as an example. They will be tracking web hits on the program and following up directly with the contacts and linking them to CATCH.

Being a new organization within Health Canada they want to be able to talk about success stories relative to real interventions. They work with a broad base of academic institutions and are very familiar with work being done in the physical activity and childhood obesity realm in Canada . They pointed to a study recently done where CATCH was highlighted by the Manitoba Division of the Canadian Cancer Society as an effective school based intervention. Who Knew?? I will be following up with that group.

They are looking to us to evaluate the effectiveness of their tool and organization in linking evidence to real practice. I think we have a great opportunity to build a relationship similar to the CDC and CATCH in the U.S. The main difference is that there is no granting or funding available directly from this agency although they think there could be an opportunity to link those with funding with programming. We also lack a strong link with a Canadian academic institution. Brock University has been our biggest support and still has possibilities so we hope this exposure may allow us to build other relationships.

All in all this will add credibility to our program, especially in the Public Health Realm in Canada .

At the end of September, Kristen Rusho and Teresa Renaldo of the Oakville Y will be presenting at the Canadian Parks and Recreation Conference in Ottawa. They are using CATCH as the main intervention that can be evaluated in an after school parks and recreation setting with Kristen presenting her Rochester experience and Teresa following up with the Oakville success. The Oakville experience is very important in our overall Candian strategy with the Y.

That's all for now, still rolling in Canada!

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