Health Canada Secretariat for Injury Prevention and Control

Canada now has a national focal point for injury prevention, with the announcement in late January of a Health Canada Secretariat for Injury Prevention and Control. Working under the health ministry, the secretariat is charged with developing a national framework for injury prevention in Canada. Exactly what that means awaits the outcome of consultations across this vast land. It could at the least include securing improved collaboration among the various branches of Health Canada through which injury work is now fragmented, and among other government departments which play a part in injury prevention, such as transport, agriculture, and justice. Although a budget for national programming is lacking, the secretariat is staffed by three well known practitioners whose experience brings together three elements of injury prevention (surveillance and research, public education, and community action): Francine Archambault, who previously managed national public education programs for the health protection branch of Health Canada; Margaret Herbert, an epidemiologist who managed CHIRPP, Canada's emergency department injury surveillance system; and Morag Mackay, an injury epidemiologist who also built a community injury prevention program in the Ottawa area. Their goal is to have a national plan ready for the Montreal world conference in 2002.