About an hour drive north of Toronto, Simcoe County, Ontario, embraces a group of 16 municipalities and two cities with a total population of about 446,000. A key concern for the region is how to manage growth in a way that preserves and improves the values and quality of life in the region and its communities.
The Barrie Community Health Centre (BCHC) created the first local CIW group in Canada. Using the CIW framework, they were able to bring together a number of important organisations, including the county government, the United Way, the local community college, the public health unit, an environment network, and the school board. They call themselves the Resilience Collaborative. Their main goal is to reach out and engage large segments of the population that might not otherwise be involved in the decisions that shape their lives.
Whenever the CIW produces a national report on a specific wellbeing domain, the Resilience Collaborative holds a parallel event (e.g., releases a report that makes recommendations for local policy change or holds a celebration event or workshop). For example, when the CIW released the Environment Domain Report in April 2011, the Collaborative released its own regional environment report the same day, in front of Simcoe County Council.
Following the release of its report, several presentations were made to local citizen groups by the Chair of the Resilience Collaborative, Gary Machan. "At the end of the day, what really matters is not so much the information, as much as it's a case of what you do with it," Machan said. "And it is here that the involvement of the civic sector becomes absolutely imperative. I try to tap into the specific areas that people feel passionate about in our community. In Simcoe, there is a great deal of interest in building more sustainable food systems, hence, we are working with a variety of stakeholders in crafting local food procurement policies both at the municipal and institutional levels."
The BCHC also has developed a number of questions based on indicators drawn from each of the domains of the CIW into their process for signing on new clients. They ask people about their income and education levels, access to friends and family, access to nutritious food, and levels of time stress. According to Machan,
not only does this provide us with a far better profile of who it is that uses our services, to which we in turn can be more responsive, but we are also finding that the very act of asking the questions performs a valuable educational function in terms of helping people connect the dots between their health and the determinants of health.