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Community health promotion

NEW! Best Practice Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion Programs: Children & Youth
This web-based resource helps service providers to integrate best practice approaches in their mental health promotion interventions for children (7–12 years of age) and youth (13–19 years of age). The resource identifies 10 best practice guidelines, and provides theoretical background plus practical resources for planning and implementing mental health promotion initiatives with children and youth.

Promoting positive mental health for people aged 55 and older will be the focus of the next guide in the series for promoting positive mental health across the life span, coming early in 2008.

Health promotion and prevention action plan for French-speaking ethno-racial communities

Through funding from Health Canada and Immigration Canada, CAMH undertook a needs assessment in partnership with five French-speaking ethno-racial communities in Toronto. As a result of the needs assessment, we developed a Health Promotion and Prevention Action Plan, aimed at improving mental health and addiction literacy and access to services. One of the components of this plan is a public advertising campaign to increase awareness of mental health and substance use in the French-speaking communities; another is a series of photo-novellas on addiction and mental health issues.

This project builds on the pioneering work of the Building Bridges Breaking Barriers Access Project and the Ethno-Racial Coalition: Access to Addiction Services, both of which are designed to ensure that ethno-racial communities have access to quality mental health and substance use services from CAMH. Francophones from the Greater Toronto Area raised many concerns about barriers to access and unmet needs that we hope to begin addressing through this project.

For further information, contact Antoine Derose, Project Consultant, CAMH (antoine_derose@camh.net).

Municipal Alcohol Policy Guide: A practical resource for successfully managing drinking in recreational settings

CAMH is releasing a new resource, Municipal Alcohol Policy Guide:  A practical resource for successfully managing drinking in recreational settings.  The Guide reflects more than 20 years of experience working with community partners and research in Municipal Alcohol Policy (MAP) development initiated by the Addiction Research Foundation, now part of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). With over half of Ontario municipalities having adopted MAPs, CAMH recognized the readiness for and interest in municipalities developing their own policies with the assistance of an effective, self-directed guide.

Available in English and French, the MAP Guide has been produced in a three-ring binder format which includes a CD that provides sample MAPs, a MAP workbook, toolkit and other resources. The MAP Guide is designed to address particular community needs, whether a municipality is developing a MAP for the first time, reviewing an existing MAP, or consolidating two or more MAPs. The MAP Guide will help communities plan ahead and gather the information and materials needed for developing their own alcohol risk management policy. 

The MAP Guide will be distributed through the Ontario Recreation Facilities Association Inc. (ORFA), a long-standing partner in the Guide's development and publication process. ORFA will sell the MAP Guide for $75 to their members and fulfill all orders within Canada for the same price. The order information for ORFA is available at www.orfa.com.

Municipal alcohol policy is accepted as a best practice by and for municipalities.  According to John Milton, Executive Director of the Ontario Recreation Facilities Association, "The Municipal Alcohol Policy Guide is a tool that no municipality or related organization should be without when carrying out their responsibility of effectively managing events where alcohol is served".

Should you wish to find out more about the MAP Guide, please contact:

• Claire Narbonne-Fortin (claire_narbonne@camh.net)
• Janet McAllister (janet_mcallister@camh.net)
• Marianne Kobus-Matthews (marianne_kobusmatthe@camh.net)