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INSPIRING HEALTHY FUTURES
INSPIRING HEALTHY FUTURES
Areas of Action
Co-designing the future
Canada is at a decisive moment for children and youth. Despite being one of the world's most prosperous nations, outcomes for young people continue to lag behind those of peer countries. The challenge is not a shortage of expertise, innovation, or commitment. Fragmented structures across the systems that shape children's lives—health, education, child welfare, mental health, justice, social services, and community supports—together with misaligned policies, uneven access, and short-term funding cycles, contribute to an environment in which progress is possible but rarely sustained.
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Our latest Summit Report synthesizes the perspectives, insights, areas of alignment, and points of tension expressed by participants from across Canada's child- and youth-serving ecosystem during the 2025 Fall Summit. It is a roadmap for the next two to three years, structured around six system-level Areas of Action that participants consistently named as critical to improving outcomes for children and youth.
1
Develop an Integrated Child and Youth Data & Evidence System
An integrated data and evidence system would enable learning across sectors, support real-time responsiveness, and strengthen accountability for results. It would include distinctions-based Indigenous data governance, ethical stewardship frameworks, and investments that empower communities, researchers, and service providers to analyze and use data effectively in everyday decision-making, planning, and service improvement.
2
Integrate Knowing, Learning, and Action Across Systems
Across Canada, while many knowledge gaps continue to exist, strong evidence exists for many aspects of what supports child and youth well-being. Yet systems often struggle to translate this knowledge into coordinated action. A challenge is the absence of structures that support implementation, scale, adaptation, and learning. Innovations remain tied to short-term projects, and systems default to pilots rather than embedding successful models.
3
Increase Prevention and Promote Health, Mental Health, and Social Literacy
Preventable harms and avoidable crises continue to place strain on systems and families. Despite extensive evidence demonstrating the long-term benefits of early intervention and health promotion, preventive approaches remain underfunded and inconsistently implemented across the country. Investments are disproportionately concentrated in crisis response, generating higher long-term costs and reducing opportunities for early support.
4
Expand Access to Community Supports and Whole-Community Approaches
Communities are the primary context in which children grow, develop, and form identity. They provide belonging, stability, cultural grounding, and relational connection. Yet community organizations often operate with short-term funding, limited infrastructure, and administrative burdens that impede long-term planning and equitable access—and families consistently tell us that finding services is not the same as accessing them.
5
Build Child-Centred Systems and Improve Transitions
Transitions—between early learning and school, between services, and especially between pediatric and adult systems—remain some of the most vulnerable points in a child's life. Current structures are designed around institutional boundaries rather than developmental trajectories, resulting in gaps in continuity, inconsistent eligibility rules, and avoidable harms.
6
Strengthen Leadership, Governance, and Shared Accountability
Central to effective governance is co-governance: formal, compensated, and sustained roles for youth, families, and Indigenous partners in decision-making, priority-setting, and accountability. System transformation requires sustained, coordinated leadership across all levels of government and across sectors. Canada lacks a coherent national architecture capable of aligning investments, accountability, and sustained system learning. Progress currently relies on short-term initiatives, individual champions, and ad hoc coordination.
We are calling on leaders across sectors to:
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Align around the six national priorities and integrate them into strategic plans.
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Contribute to and adopt a shared national set of child well-being indicators.
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Participate in the national coalition to coordinate action across research, practice, policy, and community systems, including aligning research agendas with system-wide priorities.
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Use a shared communications narrative rooted in rights, equity, community strength, and economic value.
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Share innovations and build a learning ecosystem—not isolated pilots.
With coordinated leadership, long-term investment, and a commitment to equity, Canada can transform a fragmented landscape into a coherent system that reflects the rights, cultures, and aspirations of young people across the country.
The time to act—decisively and together—is now.
For reference, you can also view the Summit agenda, a list of participant affiliations, an info sheet produced by the One Child Every Child team, and the Deloitte report "Thrive: The Economic Case for Investing in Children’s Health."
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We extend our heartfelt thanks to all our partners and contributors who made this work possible, including our founding co-sponsors: UNICEF Canada, Children’s Healthcare Canada, the Pediatric Chairs of Canada, and the CIHR Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health. A Future Fit for Kids Summit would not have been possible without the incredible partnership of One Child Every Child and Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities.
Previous Priorities
The 2023 agenda (2.0)
Canada is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet we consistently rank low among peer countries in terms of child and youth health outcomes. The Inspiring Healthy Futures initiative was launched to address this disparity and foster a collaborative, multi-sectoral approach to improving the lives of children and families across the country.
​In 2023 we launched the second agenda designed to accelerate progress in child and youth health and well-being across Canada through 2024–2025. Building on the successes of our initial plan, this updated Acceleration Agenda outlined seven high-level actions that aim to create transformative impact and sustainable change.
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Collaborate to develop a National Child and Youth Strategy to be the foundation for multi-generational, sustainable change.
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Expedite equitable access to essential healthcare for all childrenand youth, regardless of their postal code.
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Catalyze pan-Canadian strategies for a sustainable health workforce based on future needs.
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Support a fully integrated, collaborative research ecosystem that enables sustainable discovery science, shapes improved health outcomes, and informs equitable child, youth, and family health policy.
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Accelerate action on climate policy with a child and youth well-being and rights approach.
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Activate and support schools as community hubs to promote healthy development for kids and families.
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Partner with Indigenous communities to accelerate community-defined research and health priorities.
The 2021 agenda (1.0)
Our initial Acceleration Agenda guided our work through 2021–2023. Throughout the development of Inspiring Healthy Futures, participants repeatedly emphasized that we must act together and with urgency. As the COVID-19 era was unfolding, it was important to mobilize to prevent further risk to children and strengthen resilience and inclusive recovery.
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As a collective, we would be better able to ensure politicians, policymakers, community leaders and other decision-makers understand that equitable child, youth and family health and well-being must be at the centre. Without child and family recovery there is no economic recovery and no sustainable future. This initial Acceleration Agenda set the foundation for longer-term, substantive action.
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1.1 A plan for child, youth and family-friendly pandemic recovery
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As investment and funding decisions are made for COVID-19 recovery, we need to launch a comprehensive campaign to call attention to the evolving and inequitable impacts on the mental and physical health and well-being of children, youth and families.
This campaign will highlight the need for access to inclusive, accessible, flexible policies and services for recovery, resilience and rebuilding across systems. A focus is needed on early childhood, youth at risk, youth in transition to adulthood, and families with children with complex physical and developmental conditions.
This campaign will energize a recovery plan and take us another step toward what participants described as a national hub to help foster connection and integration across research, policymaking, system-building and advocacy for and with children, youth and families.
1.2 Comprehensive, cross-disciplinary research to understand and alleviate the full impact of the COVID-19 era on children, youth and families
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COVID-19 is a novel disease, with uncertain and evolving direct and indirect impacts on children, youth and pregnancy. The pandemic era has generated unprecedented social changes that may affect the development, well-being and trajectories of children and youth for decades. To generate the most meaningful knowledge about impact, mitigation, resilience and recovery, researchers and decision-makers need to come together now, across disciplines, to initiate interconnected short and longitudinal studies.
1.3 A national child and youth hub to connect research, policy, systems, advocacy and services
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The single most commonly identified action by participants in Inspiring Healthy Futures was to create a “network of networks” to connect the diverse communities of people who study, mobilize, advocate for and work with children, youth and families.
Building on existing platforms and networks, this initiative should enable people to locate others; find and create communities of practice; share knowledge, resources and ideas; support each other; collaborate on research and other initiatives; and share opportunities for youth involvement.