OPHA partners with a network of organizations across Ontario to fight chronic disease.

Chronic Disease Prevention (CDP) Projects

The Ontario Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance (OCDPA) is a coalition of more than 30 health-related organizations, programs and groups committed to providing collaborative leadership to support a chronic disease prevention system for Ontario. The alliance was formed in February 2003 to address a growing need, nationally and provincially, for integrated action on the issue of chronic disease prevention.

Mental Health and Chronic Disease Prevention

On February 6, 2009, the OCDPA, in partnership with its members, the Canadian Mental Health Association - Ontario Division and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, hosted a Systems Think Tank on Mental Health and Chronic Disease Prevention: Moving Forward to:

  • Enhance the capacity of the chronic disease prevention system;
  • Integrate mental health promotion into current and future work within the system;
  • Identify opportunities for collaboration.

As a follow-up, the OCDPA developed a vision for mental health and chronic disease prevention. Our vision is that the OCDPA member organizations will understand the influence of mental health on chronic diseases, integrate that understanding into their frameworks, and take action to include mental health as a risk factor and to promote positive mental health as part of their chronic disease prevention activities.

Common Messages

The OCDPA believes that it is essential in Ontario for community and health practitioners, groups and organizations whose work relates to chronic disease and its prevention to think, and act, like a system in order to address prevention and reduce the burden of chronic disease in this province.

Through its membership and feedback from external field experts, the OCDPA developed consistent messaging for use by individuals, groups and organizations to focus attention on important issues and priorities in chronic disease prevention and to promote collective action on these issues across Ontario. The Common Messages document, Supporting Collective Priorities and Action on Chronic Disease Prevention in Ontario [PDF], was released in February 2009. The messages take a “socio-environmental approach” to preventing chronic disease, and are framed around the central themes of “availability and accessibility” to encourage the promotion of healthy eating, physical activity, and mental health as well as the reduction of tobacco and alcohol use.

In an effort to encourage greater focus on the promotion of health and the prevention of chronic disease, the messages provide focal points to address either broader chronic disease prevention or risk factor specific issues. The messages focus on key policies and environmental supports required to address chronic disease and its risk factors. Each message provides examples and recommendations, based on evidence, of actions that can be taken to support healthier living conditions.

A Joint CPCHE-OCDPA Initiative on Early Environmental Exposures and Chronic Disease Prevention in Ontario

The Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment (CPCHE) and the OCDPA are collaborating on a two-year joint initiative on early environmental exposures and chronic disease prevention in Ontario, with support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. The project will build the relationship between the children’s environmental health sector (CPCHE) and the chronic disease prevention sector (OCDPA) in support of positive changes, in policy and programming, to assist in the prevention of chronic diseases associated with early exposures to toxic substances in the environment or in consumer products. The interest of the networks to collaborate on this joint initiative is in recognition of the potentially important role that early exposures — from preconception through adolescence — can have in the development of chronic disease.

OCDPA: Recent Accomplishments

In 2008, the OCDPA: