Conference program

Registration and poster setup

André Loranger, Chief Statistician of Canada
Josée Bégin, Assistant Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada

Data Mobilization During Times of Emergencies

9:15 - 9:45

Keynote: Creating Conditions for Resilient Communities

Speaker: Dr. Theresa Tam (Chief Public Health Officer of Canada)

Description: Dr. Theresa Tam will explore how public health can leverage data to enhance equity, system resilience, and emergency response. She will discuss strategies for working with communities and partners across various sectors to build healthier and more resilient communities by emphasizing the role of public health data use to enhance health equity by placing equity at the core of emergency management science, evidence, and technology.

Introduced by: André Loranger, Chief Statistician of Canada

9:45 - 10:00

Session 1: The Canadian Wastewater Survey: A New Public Health Tool for Monitoring Infectious Diseases

Speaker: Dr. Natalie Knox (Director, Bacterial Pathogens, AMR, and Wastewater Division, Public Health Agency of Canada)

Description: Dr. Knox will discuss the Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada’s partnership to monitor infectious diseases through the Canadian Wastewater Survey and how it is being expanded to address existing and future public health threats such as Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).

10:00 - 10:15

Session 2: Medical Examiners and Coroners: An Underutilized Source of Data Amidst the Opioid Crisis and Beyond

Speaker: Dr. Matthew Bowes (Chief Medical Examiner, Government of Nova Scotia)

Description: Dr. Bowes will describe medicolegal death investigation in Canada: how it is generally done, what kinds of deaths are investigated, how practices vary, and what kinds of data are available to researchers.

10:15 - 10:30

Open Q&A

Moderator: Josée Bégin (Assistant Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada)

Health break, networking, and poster/booth viewing

Plenary: The Population Health Approach

11:00 - 11:15

Part 1: Leveraging Statistics Canada, a Key Health Data Resource

Speaker: Dr. Jeff Latimer (Director General, Statistics Canada’s Health Statistics Branch)

Description: Statistics Canada is the country’s trusted source of timely and accurate information about the health of Canadians, determinants of health, and the use of health care resources. In this talk, Dr. Latimer will provide an overview of the breadth of data housed at Statistics Canada, how to access these data, and the services available to customize and link data for your research.

11:15 - 11:30

Part 2: Disaggregated Data: Progress and Reflections

Speaker: Dr. Gaya Jayaraman (Director General, Statistics Canada’s Justice, Demography, and Population Statistics Branch)

Description: Dr. Jayaraman will discuss Statistics Canada’s progress under the Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP), which aims to increase and improve statistics on diverse populations and support more representative data collection methods across Statistics Canada.

Plenary Discussion: How Can Health Systems Use Disaggregated Data to Address Health Disparities?

11:30 - 11:35

Commentary: Dr. Kwame McKenzie (CEO, Wellesley Institute; Professor, University of Toronto) will share his insights on advancements and challenges related to race-based health data.

11:35 - 11:40

Commentary: Dr. Danièle Behn Smith (Deputy Provincial Health Officer of Indigenous Health, British Columbia Office of the Provincial Health Officer) will share her insights on advancements and challenges related to Indigenous health data.

11:40 - 12:00

Open Floor Discussion

Moderator: Josée Bégin (Assistant Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada)

Lunch, networking, and poster/booth viewing

Applying Insights to Reduce the Burden of Illness

1:00 - 1:20

Session 1: Modelling Dietary and Health Impacts of National Nutrition Policy

Speaker: Dr. Mary L’Abbé (Professor, University of Toronto, and Director, WHO Collaborating Centre on Nutrition Policy for Chronic Disease Prevention)

Description: Health Canada will require prepackaged food and beverages that exceed thresholds for sodium, sugar, or saturated fat to display a 'high in' nutrition symbol on the front of the package by January 2026. In this talk, Dr. L’Abbé will discuss how she used the Canadian Community Health Survey - Nutrition and the Survey of Household Spending linked to nutritional composition data to model the potential dietary and health impacts of these new labels. 

1:20 - 1:40

Session 2: Using Small-area Mapping of Preventable Cancers to Inform and Strengthen Cancer Prevention

Speaker: Dr. Nathalie Saint-Jacques (Senior Epidemiologist, Nova Scotia Health Cancer Care Program; Adjunct Professor, Dalhousie University; Associate Research Scholar, Dalhousie University Healthy Populations Institute)

Description: Dr. Saint-Jacques will discuss her research on small-area analysis of cancer incidence in relation to the social, material, and environmental conditions in which people live, demonstrating how a geographically focused approach can inform and strengthen equitable cancer prevention activities.

1:40 - 2:00

Session 3: Projecting Dementia Incidence: The Population Health Model for Dementia (POHEM-Dementia)

Speaker: Dr. Stacey Fisher (Post-doctoral Fellow, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute)

Description: Dr. Fisher will discuss a microsimulation model for dementia that was developed to investigate the contribution of modifiable risk factors to dementia incidence, and to evaluate potential intervention strategies and policy options.

2:00 - 2:30

Panel Discussion: Reducing the Burden of Illness in Canada: Barriers and Opportunities

Moderator: Michael Tjepkema, Assistant Director, Health Analysis Division, Statistics Canada

Health break, networking, and poster/booth viewing

Environment and Health (“One Health”)

3:00 - 3:30

Keynote: Getting Ahead of the Climate Change Curve: Science to Support Health Adaptation

Speaker: Dr. Peter Berry (Senior Policy Analyst and Science Advisor, Climate Change and Health Office, Health Canada)

Description: Dr. Berry will discuss the current science around climate change risks to health, vulnerabilities, and adaptation needs, with the hope of fostering future collaborations and innovative solutions.

Introduced by: Josée Bégin (Assistant Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada)

3:30 - 3:45

Session 1: Examining the Health Impacts of Extreme Heat: Future Temperature-related Excess Mortality and Morbidity in Canada

Speaker: Dr. Éric Lavigne (Epidemiologist, Health Canada; Adjunct Professor, University of Ottawa)

Description: Dr. Lavigne will present his work using time series analysis to estimate associations between daily temperatures and mortality/hospitalizations across Canada until 2099, providing insights into expected health outcomes across varying climate change and population growth scenarios.

3:45 - 4:00

Session 2: Use of Human Biomonitoring Data in Human Health Risk Assessments of Chemical Management Plan Substances

Speaker: Dr. Innocent Jayawardene (Scientific Evaluator and Chemist, Health Canada)

Description: Dr. Jayawardene will share highlights from a Health Canada study measuring 12 elements, including 5 rare earth metals, in whole blood samples using the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) biobank, to assess health risks of Chemicals Management Plan (CMP) substances.

4:00 - 4:15

Open Q&A

Moderator: Josée Bégin (Assistant Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada)

Josée Bégin, Assistant Chief Statistician, Statistics Canada

Conference End