The Healthy Canadians and Communities fund is a funding program from the Public Health Agency of Canada. This program intends to prevent chronic diseases, including diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Projects that will be supported by the Healthy Canadians and Communities Fund are those that address the common behavioural risk factors, including tobacco use, unhealthy eating, and physical inactivity.
The priority population for this program is that which faces health inequalities and is at greater risk of developing chronic disease:
- Indigenous peoples
- Newcomers to Canada
- People with disabilities
- 2SLGBTQIA+ communities
- People living on low incomes
- Racialized communities (such as Black and South Asian).
Eligible Applicants & Project Requirements
Here is the list of who can apply to this program:
- private sector organizations
- unincorporated groups, societies, and coalitions
- not-for-profit voluntary organizations and non-profit corporations
- provincial, territorial, regional and municipal governments and agencies
- national, provincial, and community-based Indigenous organizations, including band councils
- organizations and institutions supported by provincial and territorial governments (for example, schools, regional health authorities, post-secondary institutions)
The program has 3 phases:
- Design: Initial design of an intervention with a priority population and development of multi-sectoral partnerships
- Implement: Project delivery with partners and evaluation of the intervention
- Scale: Expand an intervention that has been evaluated and shown to work in order to impact greater numbers, alter cultural norms, or change policies
For this call for applications, eligible applicants must select one of the 3 funding streams available as the main focus for their project
Here are the 3 streams:
Stream 1: Creating supportive social environments for tobacco prevention and cessation: Population groups with higher smoking rates are more likely to be in environments where smoking is the norm. Pro-smoking environments contribute to smoking uptake. They can also be a barrier to cessation among the priority populations.
Stream 2: Creating food environments that enable access to healthy foods to improve healthy eating: Healthy eating is difficult without access to healthy food. Having available and affordable healthy foods, and environments that support healthy eating, can encourage people to make healthier food choices.
Stream 3: Creating and/or promoting healthy built environments to increase physical activity Interventions that increase the health-promoting potential of environments are effective at preventing chronic disease. Healthy built environments can help increase physical activity and provide opportunities for community members to be active where they live, work, and play.
Award amount & application deadline
The total funding amount you can request for your project under the implement phase must be between $200,000 and $3,000,000. The timeframe for your project must be between 2 and 4 years. Applicants who are invited to the full proposal stage will need to submit a detailed budget. The Public Health Agency of Canada will fund up to 50% of the total budget. You must secure the other half of the amount from other sources. Your organization can be the other source of matched funding.
The Public Health Agency of Canada is currently accepting applications only for the implement phase. The deadline for submitting the completed advanced form is December 21, 2022. Successful applicants will be notified by email within 120 working days, and they will be invited to submit a full proposal.
For more information about this funding opportunity, visit this link: Overview: Healthy Canadians and Communities Fund – Canada.ca
