Activate Health is a call for you to be a health ambassador in your community.
We launched this campaign in the summer of 2019 with the goal of starting a conversation about health and what ‘health’ really means.
In our healthcare system, we tend to think about the sick, the vulnerable, the injured.
Yet, health is created outside the healthcare system—what if we put our focus on generating positive health rather than addressing illness and injury after it occurs?
If we focus on what creates health—equity, social and economic supports, addressing root issues, promoting health—in doing so, we aim for well-being across all parameters of life and we put the emphasis on creating the healthy human.
Our goal is to drive the dialogue about the importance of population health, and we want to make this accessible to everyone. Why?
Because our individual actions can have a population-level impact.
This is what we started through Activate Health. This is our battle cry.
Little did we know, as we started talking about Activate Health and engaging with our followers, that this message was going to become more important than ever.
Enter 2020: we started the new year off with a bang with 20x20x20—20 ways to Activate Health, over 20 days, to kick off 2020. Here are some examples: wash your hands, stay up-to-date with your vaccinations, smile at a stranger and check in on a friend, use evidence-based information—sound familiar?
Then, enter February, and the world changed. Suddenly we were facing the biggest real-time example of Activate Health: COVID-19. The global pandemic has shown us the importance and value of how each one of our actions protects the population, and impacts the greater good.
We’ve all learned a lot this year, and we’ve all had our own experiences of the pandemic. Yet, we’ve also been part of a shared collective experience with the world, and it’s this that has truly shown how so many of our individual actions, choices, and behaviours can impact others.
So, while our 20x20x20 campaign remains entirely relevant to how we navigate our health now, the current pandemic, and our healthy future, COVID-19 has brought us a few new ways to protect one another and to keep our population safe.
Something else powerful happened this year. Over 1,100 people have donated so far to our Emergency Response Fund, and we were able to rapidly raise enough funds to support real-time research that is helping our public health leaders across BC respond to the pandemic.
Over 1,100 people and businesses recognizing that their individual gift—from $3 to over $100,000—would have a significant impact on our ability to respond to COVID-19. This is the power of the intersection between philanthropy and science. This is Activate Health, too.
As we look back at 2020 and think about what we started with Activate Health, here’s our battle cry for 2021: let’s focus on protecting the health of our communities, now and for future generations.
Let’s believe that creating a truly healthy society requires a shift in not only how we view health, but in how we resource health.
Let’s shift the lens on how we see, think about, and engage with our health.
Let’s continue to do our part—individually and collectively—to mark our path forward through this global pandemic, so that when we get to the other side, we’re stronger, safer, more connected, and can find a genuine understanding of positive health situated within a healthy society.
As we close out 2020 and look ahead to 2021: it’s time to Activate Health.
Will you join us by being a health ambassador in your community?