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Welcome to the SPARK Newsletter!

Delivered twice monthly, the SPARK: News e-bulletin provides members and other subscribers with valuable information through the following sections:

Happy Holidays from the team at Children's Healthcare Canada!

Season’s greetings and best wishes for a happy, healthy, and joyous holiday season! Your dedication and commitment to children's health shines through in all that you do, and we appreciate you.

Please note that our Children's Healthcare Canada office will be closed from December 24, 2022 to January 2, 2023. We look forward to reconnecting in the New Year! 

That's a Wrap on #ChildHealthCan2022!

#ChildHeatlhCan2022 was a special event for the child and youth health community. We wanted to come together in celebration, but we came together instead, in solidarity, acknowledging the challenges to our community and the system. We met and connected in both small, focused conversations, and collectively to learn from leaders in data, strategy, system transformation, teamwork, innovation, healthy environments and so much more.

Family and youth partners, nurses, mental health professionals, researchers, clinical and executive leaders strategized on the best way forward to ensure a resilient, inclusive and equitable system for child and youth health. The energy of the Children's Healthcare Canada community created a feeling of optimism and hope for a bright future, and we hope that energy was carried back to our members. Thank you again to our many speakers, sponsors and delegates, virtual and in-person, who helped to create this inspiring event.

If you were a conference delegate, you're now able to login to the conference website to view the recordings of the main stage sessions. 
National Kids and Vaccines Day 2023

Children's Healthcare Canada and ScienceUpFirst, with funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada, have declared February 23, 2023, to be National Kids and Vaccines Day 2023 (#KidsVaccinesDay). This day will bring together healthcare leaders and experts from across disciplines to help move the needle (pun intended) and promote vaccine confidence for Canada’s children. This year's focus will be on:

  • Routine vaccinations for children (2 months to 5 years): critical for protection against a wide range of vaccine-preventable diseases. Catching up on routine childhood immunization and ensuring that coverage doesn’t slip, or remain low, must be a top priority for children's healthcare professionals and parents as we look to our future.
  • Influenza and COVID-19 vaccines, an important safe and effective method to combat these viral infections, especially in light of the current crisis in children's healthcare.

Save the date for February 23 when Children's Healthcare Canada and ScienceUpFirst will be hosting a national, bilingual online Town Hall, during which experts will respond to questions from Canadians. 

Learn more about National Kids and Vaccines Day and how you can join the movement! 
Children's Healthcare Canada Leadership Awards

The Children’s Healthcare Canada Awards Program, which has been running since 2005, serves to recognize and honour leaders and champions within the child and youth healthcare community. We were thrilled to present the 2022 awards at our Children’s Healthcare Canada Annual Conference in Ottawa on November 29th. Please join us in celebrating these incredible leaders!

A full list of our award winners and information on the program can be found here.
December SPARK Theme: Systems Transformation

December 19
Podcast with Helen Bevan

Health Systems Transformation: Learning from Experts on Ways to Inform System Change


Learn more

January 30
Podcast with Dr. Cindy Blackstock

Spirit Bears Guide to Reconciliation: Utilizing Jordan's Principle and the Spirit Bear Plan to achieve culturally based equity for First Nations Children
More details coming soon

Coming in January
Webinar
Community hospitals: Key to an integrated healthcare system for children and youth 

More details coming soon
Frayme’s 2023 Learning Institute Call For Abstracts: Now Open

Frayme has announced that their 2023 Learning Institute will be taking place on February 22-23, 2023 in Vancouver, BC. The hybrid conference, themed Great Big Stories: Creating Change, Together, will bring together diverse players from across the sector to brainstorm what a better system looks like and how we can get there together.

The Call For Abstracts for #Frayme2023 is now open until December 15, 2022 12:00AM EST. Three types of programming will be offered at the 2023 Learning Institute: in-person workshop, and poster presentations (in-person and virtual). Frayme wants to hear about what you’ve been working on to showcase stories of partnership, collaboration and knowledge sharing to improve the Canadian YMHSU system.

Learn more about the 2023 Learning Institute here, and find out more on the eligibility criteria and submission details for the Call For Abstracts here.
We are conducting a national social network analysis survey to understand how groups of people involved in child development and rehabilitation connect with others to share and use knowledge. The overall goal of this work is to improve families’ access to safe, effective health care and knowledge. The findings can be used to create strategies and to support connections that help move knowledge into action.

Who is this survey for?
This survey is for people who are involved in child development and rehabilitation in Canada, including family members and caregivers, health care providers, researchers, and knowledge translation support people.

To participate in the survey, click
here (The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete.)

If you have any questions, please contact Jeremy, the research study coordinator, at
jeremy.layco@umanitoba.ca, or call 204-789-3372. Read more about the study here.

Thank you for taking part!
Kristy Wittmeier and Stephanie Glegg, on behalf of the project team

Managing critical drug shortages in clinical practice

In late summer 2022, critical shortages of liquid formulations of over-the-counter pain relievers and antipyretics were reported, garnering significant media attention, alarming families, and challenging health care systems. Weeks later, shortages of liquid formulations of antibiotics commonly used in paediatric practice were classified as Tier 3 drug shortages. Tier 3 drug shortages have the greatest potential impact on Canada’s drug supply and health care system. 

There are multiple reasons for these drug shortages, including complex supply chain issues, labour-related challenges, and a lack of both manufacturing capacity and emergency stock in the face of increased demand.  Continue reading

 
Children’s Hospital provides families with specialized coaching program
 
(LONDON, Ontario) - Children’s Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) is one of the first paediatric centres in Canada giving families the personal support and resources they need during sudden life changing moments.

The ground-breaking Shared Decision Making (SDM) program is headed by LHSC’s Dr. Craig Campbell and Bonnie Wooten who were recently recognized by Muscular Dystrophy Canada (MDC) allowing patients and families to receive unbiased decision support for medical decisions.
The program provides patients and their families with support, knowledge, tools and resources to be able to make informed evidence-based choices.

Since implementation in 2018, the SDM service has impacted over 200 patients from the paediatric clinical programs internally, and externally from the province and community. By facilitating accessible and respectful decision making services via a Decision Coach to patients, caregivers and health care providers at Children’s Hospital and beyond, the program has brought a new dynamic to the engagement of patients and families in their health care decisions, which is the focal point of true patient centered care.

The SDM environment at Children’s Hospital has facilitated better quality treatment and care decisions with added confidence that decisions made are informed and aligned with patient and family values.  Decision support holds the potential to progress health care choices along, releasing families of the burden of unmade decisions and shifting the focus back to recovery and moving forward.  Decisional regret can be reduced which is particularly important in the paediatric environment where parents are making decisions on behalf of a child or when a young adult is involved in the decision making. The experience gained through working with a Decision Coach or resources even one time can equip patients and families with an invaluable set of transferable skills and tools they can apply to future healthcare, school and social decisions.

Learn more about the coaching program here. 
 
 
For more information contact:
Bonnie Wooten
SDM Implementation Consultant/Decision Coach
London Health Sciences Centre
(519) 685.8500 x58207

decisioncoach@lhsc.on.ca
www.lhsc.on.ca/shared-decision-making
A special thank you to the Fanshawe School of Contemporary Media Students and Faculty for helping with bringing the SDM vision to life!
Exploring How Health Care Providers Define Phenotypic Features in Children: A Survey Study

Camille Valentin is a Master’s Student at McGill University studying Human Genetics, under the supervision of Dr. Catherine Goudie, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the Montreal Children's Hospital. Their team is conducting an anonymous survey to explore the current landscape of how health care providers, whose role involves evaluating children, define certain physical features. This survey should take 5 minutes to complete and they are are hoping to get responses from a variety of health care providers around the world. This study has been approved by the McGill University Health Centre Research Ethics Board (2023-9230). 
 
Thank you for your participation. 
 
You can access the survey by
clicking here
 
If you have any questions, please contact Lara Reichman: lara.reichman@rimuhc.ca.
 
Camille Valentin, BSc, MSc(C)
MSc Student, Dept. of Human Genetics
Goudie Lab | McGill University
Looking for a career in the healthcare community?

Do you know someone who may be a great fit for one of these roles? Please forward along the newsletter and help our friends and partners fill these roles.

Executive Director, BORN | Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO)

Medical Imaging Nurse, Radiology | BC Children's Hospital


Check out the External Job Postings page on our new website.

Button battery injury prevention 

AboutKidsHealth has recently published a new article on button batteries. A button battery is a small, round, flat battery that is found in children’s toys and household items.

Some household objects that contain button batteries include key fobs (car keys), flashing shoes or clothing, musical greeting cards, thermometers, toys, games or talking books, flameless candles, decorations and ornaments.
Button battery injuries cannot be treated at home. If a child swallows a button battery, they must go to the hospital immediately. Button batteries can cause internal burns in as little as 15 minutes and long-term injury in just two hours.

How can button battery injuries be prevented?
While most button battery ingestions are unwitnessed, there are some things parents and caregivers can do to prevent ingestion and injury.
  • Lock up extra batteries and keep them out of sight with all of your other household hazards.
  • Keep objects with button batteries that do not have screwed-secured compartments away from children.
  • Ensure battery-operated toys and appliances are not damaged.
  • Dispose of dead batteries right away. Cover dead batteries with duct tape or packing tape if they cannot be immediately discarded.

AboutKidsHealth is SickKids’ health-education website and features more than 3,500 articles on a range of health topics. For more information on button batteries and other health topics, visit www.aboutkidshealth.ca

Adventure Story

Students will click through an interactive 'choose your own adventure' story to help them prepare for vaccination day and explore the questions they have about vaccines, like:
  • What are vaccines?
  • How do vaccines work?
  • Why are vaccines important?
  • How do I deal with vaccine-related anxiety?
It is available in English and FrenchIt can also be downloaded and used offline. Visit the website for more information. 

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Children's Healthcare Canada members are invited to submit content (300-word submission with a banner image and URL link). If you are interested in posting an article, resource, or news via SPARK: News, please contact us at .

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