The Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO) at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute is pleased to present its 13th Annual Report. HALO had another successful and productive year in 2019, continuing our commitment to improve the health and well-being of children and youth in Ottawa, Ontario, across Canada, and around the world.
HALO saw significant changes in staff in 2019; notably the loss of long-time HALOites Joel Barnes and Hélène Larocque who both moved on to other positions, and are missed. It was also a big year for students with four MSc (Ryan Featherstone, Kaamel Hafizi, Tyler Kung, Jackie Lee) and two PhD students (Salomé Aubert, Taru Manyanga) graduating. We welcomed new staff and students to maintain our compliment as you will see in this report. The reach and impact of the HALO extended family continues to grow and our alumni continue to help change the world – please see their updates and achievements in the “where are they now” section. Several more HALOite babies were also welcomed into the world in 2019.
HALO researchers published many scientific papers, in many of the highest impact journals, and with significant global media attention – our work matters! HALO scientists, staff, students, and visitors made scholarly presentations around the world, around Canada, around Ontario, and around Ottawa. As summarized in the “Highlights” section of the Annual Report, HALO had several notable achievements in 2019. These included the official launch of Outdoor Play Canada, important studies on the impact of physical activity and screen time on mental and emotional health, high impact papers from the ABCD dataset, and an insightful project on the pernicious price of formatting in scientific publishing. Please also see the extensive list of awards HALOites received in 2019!
In 2019 HALO welcomed visitors and trainees from Brazil, Colombia, Finland, France, New Caledonia, the United States, Uruguay, and Zimbabwe – our international impact continues to grow. We welcomed Drs. Michael Borghese, Justin Lang, Allana LeBlanc, and Jeremy Walsh as Affiliate Investigators with HALO. We continue to benefit from our collaborations with alumni, visitors, and affiliates who all help to propel our mission forward.
Through research, leadership, knowledge translation, partnerships, training and education, and advocacy, HALO works diligently to promote and preserve healthy active lifestyles while managing and treating childhood inactivity and obesity. This Annual Report provides a catalogue of the activities and accomplishments of HALO in 2019 and is intended to inform partners, stakeholders, funders, potential students and staff, and other interested parties about our group. It is available in print form upon request and also on our website at www.haloresearch.ca. HALO remains indebted to the donors, contributors, researchers, stakeholders, alumni and partners, who fund, facilitate, support and synergize our efforts. To all of you, please accept our most sincere thanks and our pledge to continue to work together for the health of our children.
Best wishes for a healthy, active 2020!
Mark Tremblay, Ph.D., D.Litt. (hons), F-CSEP, FACSM, CSEP-CEP
Director, Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO), CHEO Research Institute
Professor/Scientist, Department of Pediatrics, University of Ottawa
President, Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance
Chair, Outdoor Play Canada
Archives
In this column last year, I highlighted international, national, and provincial declarations of increased commitments to health promotion and disease prevention. I posed the question, are we really ready, finally, to commit to prevention and the preservation of health? While recognizing that the political machinery moves slowly, there is no evidence that the various declarations have gained any traction. This has been the case since the Lalonde Report brought the intuitive importance of disease prevention to the collective consciousness of Canadians in 1974. Such lethargy further mortgages the health of the population and the Canadian health debt continues to rise far beyond what we will ever be able to afford to repair or pay back. Unfortunately, informed predictions forecast the greatest consequences will be borne by our children.
On a positive note, the physical activity sector in Canada continues to make significant progress despite anemic government involvement or support. In March 2012, with leadership from HALO, the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology released the first Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines for the Early Years (aged 0-4 years) and the world’s first Sedentary Behaviour Guidelines for the Early Years. Throughout 2012 the physical activity sector worked together to create Active Canada 20/20 – A Physical Activity Strategy and Change Agenda for Canada. Although the 2012 Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth gave the country a failing grade for the 6th consecutive year, the Report Card theme questioning “is active play extinct?” led to the creation of a communications campaign by ParticipACTION to Bring Back Play! A national initiative targeted to health care providers called Exercise is Medicine was also launched in an effort to increase the measurement of physical activity as the 5th vital sign and the prescription of physical activity for the preservation and enhancement of health.
Through research, leadership, knowledge translation, partnerships, training and education, and advocacy HALO will continue to promote and preserve healthy active lifestyles while managing and treating childhood inactivity and obesity. The Centre for Healthy Active Living (CHAL), directed by Dr. Stasia Hadjiyannakis, is a provincial centre of excellence for the management and treatment of children and families with complex obesity, and provides HALO’s clinical research leadership. The contributions of HALO in pursuing its mission in 2012 were the most substantial to date. The size and scope of HALO’s activities have increased significantly and continuously throughout its 5-year existence. Please read through this annual report for highlights and details of our accomplishments in 2012 and visit our website to keep abreast of our work and contributions.
HALO remains indebted to the donors, contributors, researchers, stakeholders and partners who fund, facilitate, support, and synergize our efforts. To all of you, please accept our most sincere thanks.
Our annual report provides a catalogue of the activities and accomplishments made by HALO in 2012 and is intended to inform partners, stakeholders, funders, potential students and staff, and other interested parties about our group. It is available in print form upon request and on our website.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or opportunities for HALO, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best wishes for a healthy, active 2013.
Dr. Mark Tremblay
Director, Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO), CHEO-RI
Professor/Scientist, Department of Pediatrics,University of Ottawa
Chief Scientific Officer, Active Healthy Kids Canada
In September 2011, at their sixty-sixth session in New York City, the United Nations General Assembly made a political declaration on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases – a global commitment to increase efforts at chronic disease prevention. Dr. Arlene King, Chief Medical Officer of Health in Ontario, stated in her 2010 annual report Health, Not Health Care – changing the conversation that “it is time to shift our focus from health care to prevention”, “it is about fewer people getting sick”, and “it is about more people living long and healthy lives”. A similar sentiment can be found in the Federal Government’s Declaration on Prevention and Promotion released in the fall of 2010. Are we really ready, finally, to commit to prevention and the preservation of health? Have we reached a tipping point in our commitment to prevention? I am not so sure, but it certainly seems we are closer to the precipice then we were last year.
The urgency to prevent disease and preserve health has never been greater. In January 2011 the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology released updated physical activity guidelines for school-aged children and youth and in February they released the first ever sedentary behaviour guidelines for the same age group. Using these new, evidence-informed guidelines, research from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Health Measures Survey showed that only 7% of Canadian children are achieving the minimum physical activity recommended and they are spending two-thirds of their waking time in sedentary behaviours. And once again the 2011 Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth gave the country a failing grade. ParticipACTION began their “Think Again” campaign to encourage parents to be more attentive to the physical activity levels of their children. Even if our efforts in promoting healthy active living have increased, they clearly remain insufficient.
The Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO) at the CHEO Research Institute are committed to leading the battle against unhealthy living behaviours and the effective management and treatment of childhood obesity. Through research, leadership, partnerships, education and advocacy HALO will continue to promote and preserve healthy active lifestyles while managing and treating childhood inactivity and obesity. The contributions of HALO in 2011 in this regard were by far the most substantial to date. The size and scope of HALO’s activities increased significantly in 2011 and we further increased the number of graduate students working with our group. Please read through the 2011 Annual Report for highlights and details of our accomplishments in 2011 and visit our website (www.haloresearch.ca) to keep abreast of our work and contributions.
HALO remains indebted to the donors, contributors, researchers, stakeholders and partners, who fund, facilitate, support and synergize our efforts. To all of you, please accept our most sincere thanks.
The 2011 Annual Report provides a catalogue of the activities, accomplishments and contributions made by HALO in 2011 and is intended to inform partners, stakeholders, funders, potential students and staff, and other interested parties about our group. The Annual Report is available in print form upon request and also on our website at www.haloresearch.ca.
I hope you enjoy reading our Annual Report. If you have any questions, suggestions or opportunities for HALO, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best wishes for a healthy, active 2012.
Dr. Mark Tremblay
Director, Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO), CHEO-RI
Professor/Scientist, Department of Pediatrics,University of Ottawa
Chief Scientific Officer, Active Healthy Kids Canada
Sidney Crosby scored in overtime to give Canada the gold medal in the final event of The Games to secure the Vancouver Olympics as a defining event in Canada’s sporting history – Canadians were successful, proud, and motivated. And soon thereafter, the Federal Government extended its commitment to the “Own the Podium” program in an effort to preserve our sporting success in the years to come. We should all be proud and celebrate this positive momentum.
But are we preserving the grass roots base of healthy active children from which our future Olympians and champions will emerge? Last year I began my welcoming remarks citing evidence from Statistics Canada that demonstrated clearly that the fitness of the nation has declined significantly and meaningfully over the past 30 years with the greatest declines noted in children and youth. The 2010 Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth gave the country another failing grade. New Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines were just released in January 2011, and even though many believe the guidelines have been reduced, still only 7% of Canadian kids meet the standard. Furthermore, our children are spending on average 8.6 hours per day sedentary – 62% of their waking time. Surely such population trends will negatively impact our future sporting success and our future health.
The Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO) at the CHEO Research Institute has continued its leadership in promoting and preserving healthy active lifestyles while managing and treating childhood inactivity and obesity. Indeed, 2010 was HALO’s busiest and most productive year to date. We were fortunate to hire two new Junior Research Chairs (Dr. Rachel Colley and Dr. Jean-Philippe Chaput) through generous funding support from The Lawson Foundation and the CHEO Foundation. The development of a multidisciplinary obesity treatment clinic designed to assist the most challenging obesity cases began in earnest in 2010 and is slated to be formally opened in 2011. We also increased the number of graduate students and research staff working in our group. Our research grant success and productivity, and our knowledge dissemination, transfer and translation outputs were at an all-time high in 2010. Please visit our website (www.cheori.org/halo) to keep abreast of our work and contributions. In summary, with our partners, funders, colleagues and friends, we are making a difference – but in many respects our work has just begun.
As a national centre of excellence for research, leadership, training and advocacy, HALO strives to provide national and international leadership in the prevention, management and treatment of pediatric obesity and the promotion of healthy body weights and active living. New partnerships with the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute, and the CBC Live Right Now initiative extend the reach and impact of the work HALO accomplished with its ongoing collaborations with Active Healthy Kids Canada, ParticipACTION, the Champlain Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Network, the CHEO Foundation, the CHEO Research Institute and the University of Ottawa, among others.
This Annual Report provides a catalogue of the activities and contributions made by HALO in 2010, and is intended to inform partners, stakeholders, funders, potential students and staff, and other interested parties about our group. The Annual Report is available in print form upon request and also on our website.
I hope you enjoy reading our Annual Report. If you have any questions, suggestions or opportunities for HALO, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best wishes for a healthy, active 2011.
Dr. Mark Tremblay
Director, Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group (HALO), CHEO-RI
Professor/Scientist, Department of Pediatrics, University of Ottawa
Chief Scientific Officer, Active Healthy Kids Canada