Building the healthiest campus, city and region

Leaders across sectors converged to explore how a collaborative region can turn evidence into coordinated community action

Waterloo has long been known for reimagining what’s possible through engineering, computer science and entrepreneurship. Increasingly, that same innovation mindset is being directed toward health — defined not simply as medical care, but as the product of social, environmental, technological and economic systems that create well-being.

Waterloo researchers across disciplines are pairing data with lived and living experience to understand how people and communities truly thrive. Our scholars are addressing aging, physical activity, mental well-being, equity, neighbourhood design and the technologies that support daily health decisions on individual, community and systems levels. Their work reflects a common understanding: health is not created in clinics alone; it emerges from the places we live and the supports around us.

That systems lens shaped the recent Healthy Waterloo Summit, where municipal leaders, health-system partners, business leaders, researchers and students came together to identify shared priorities and strengthen the community's capacity to act on them. Throughout a series of panels and group discussions, several key themes emerged that shaped future engagement and action.

Building community through collaboration

Former University of Waterloo president and 28th governor general of Canada, The Right Honourable David Johnston drew a local metaphor — barn-raising — to describe the region’s deep-rooted culture of empathy, trust, innovation and collective impact.

That culture, he noted, underpins Waterloo's evolution into a growing health and med-tech ecosystem, from the University's School of Pharmacy to a planned hospital on campus that will bring together the best and brightest people from the region. He framed these investments not only as advances in care, but also as catalysts for research, talent attraction and stronger community well-being.

Johnston, who lived in Waterloo for 10 years and reflected fondly of his time in the region, also offered one long-term aspiration: that Waterloo become “the happiest region in Canada,” building on a tradition of collaboration that, as he framed it, is “what’s in the water at Waterloo.”

Health shaped by housing, belonging and the built environment

Municipal leaders highlighted how policy areas outside traditional health care — such as housing, recreation, transit and placemaking — carry enormous influence over physical and mental well-being. Waterloo Mayor Dorothy McCabe emphasized “building neighbourhoods where people feel that social cohesion” as a key priority under her leadership and an essential infrastructure for a healthy Waterloo.

These perspectives echoed decades of public health evidence: lifestyle factors, stress levels, social support and early childhood experiences predict health outcomes far more powerfully than medical care alone.

Dr. Vivek Goel, president and vice-chancellor at Waterloo, cited research he previously conducted that shows a gradient across the country between health status and life expectancy. “If Ontarians matched British Columbia’s outcomes in key lifestyle determinants like diet, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and stress levels, we would add seven years life expectancy,” he said. His comment underscores the importance of community-wide action.

Defining and building success together

Participants pointed to ambitious but measurable goals: universal access to primary care teams, evidence-informed “social prescribing,” more equitable access to housing and sustained improvements in life satisfaction — shown in research to predict health outcomes as strongly as biomedical risks.

Championing the Summit was Dr. Lili Liu, dean of the Faculty of Health, who noted, “Today, we have begun to shape our road map for tackling the health and well-being challenges that are important to our campus and our community. With these goals in place, we will leverage Waterloo’s innovation eco-system to create, test and implement new health strategies that are focused, impactful and people-centred.”

As Waterloo looks towards its goals for Waterloo at 100, the Summit reinforced that the region is more than a place to study health — it is a living laboratory for testing solutions that matter locally and inspire change nationally and globally.