Canadian Pharmacists Journal - May/June 2019 - 155

COMMENTARY
EDITORIAL
extensive consultation, a process that is expected to continue
to ensure its relevancy and has been structured to provide flexibility for the majority of Canadians. However, it is important to
remember that it is difficult for many Canadians to eat healthily in their current food environment. As highlighted in the
recent Calgary Statement on policies for nutrition and health47
(see Appendix 1, available online at www.cpjournal.ca), "There
is a need to create food environments through public policies
that support Canadians in maintaining healthy diets where they
live, learn, work and play." As such, the Healthy Eating Strategy
can be seen as a starting point for the continued development of
policies that emphasize the best interests of Canadians, rather
than those of industry or certain agricultural sectors.
Canadian health care professionals and academics have a
key role to play in the implementation of the policies and tools
from the Healthy Eating Strategy (e.g., the Food Guide), ensuring accountability at all levels and the evolution of the philosophies that underpin the Healthy Eating Strategy through the
continual development of appropriate policies. If we are able
to meaningfully improve the Canadian diet, we will be able to
reap significant health, economic and societal benefits. In 2011,
Canadian health care and scientific organizations developed a
Framework for the prevention and control of hypertension.26,27
Given that 80% of hypertension is associated with unhealthy
diets, the Framework highlighted the central role of unhealthy
diets and emphasized the need to create healthy eating environments through health food policies. It is notable that Canadian
health care and scientific organizations give the highest priority to efforts to implement healthy food policies in the Framework.26 Furthermore, since the development of the Framework,
Canadian health and scientific organizations of the Canadian
Hypertension Advisory Committee have created consensus policy statements on restrictions of marketing unhealthy food to
children; healthy food procurement; increasing research, monitoring and evaluation of Canada's food supply and food policies;
defining healthy foods; taxation of unhealthy food and subsidies

for healthy food; and reducing financial conflicts of interest with
the food sector. They have also created fact sheets and calls to
action on dietary sodium and unhealthy eating.48,49 All of these
would seem to align with the main tenets of the Healthy Eating
Strategy and provide a pathway to translate policy to action.

Call to Action

We call on the whole Canadian health care and scientific community, both individuals and organizations, to ensure they have
policies consistent with and supportive of those in the Calgary
Statement47 and the Call for Action to Implement a Healthy
Food Policy Agenda,25 including all the related policy statements,48,49 and advocate to all levels of government to rapidly
implement such policies. For example, Canadian health care and
scientific organizations can actively encourage their membership to consider signing the Calgary Statement Petition47 and
join other healthy food policy advocacy efforts. Furthermore, we
encourage the community to actively participate in providing
input and feedback on the Healthy Eating Strategy through the
Health Canada Stakeholder Registry.43 This could be the most
important thing we do for our patients and our society.

Organizations involved in and journals that
are publishing this call

This editorial was generated from members of the Canadian
Hypertension Advisory Committee, which is a coalition of
Canadian health and scientific organizations (see Appendix 2
for specific organizations that have contributed to statements
from the committee) and was reviewed by all participating
member organizations. The authors of this editorial represent
the following organizations that participate in the Canadian
Hypertension Advisory Committee: Canadian Association of
Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, Hypertension
Canada, Canadian Pharmacists Association and the Heart and
Stroke Foundation of Canada-these organizations have not
directly endorsed this specific editorial. ■

From the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre (Bacon), CIUSSS-NIM, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal; the Department of Health, Kinesiology and Applied
Physiology (Bacon), Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec; the Department of Medicine, Physiology and Pharmacology and Community Health Sciences
(Campbell), O'Brien Institute for Public Health and Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta, University of Calgary, Calgary; the School of Public Health (Raine),
University of Alberta, Edmonton; the Department of Medicine (Tsuyuki), Division of Cardiology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta; the Department of
Medicine (Khan), Division of General Internal Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia; The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada
(Arango), Ottawa, Ontario; the Department of Family and Emergency Medicine (Kaczorowski), University of Montreal; and the Centre de Recherche CHUM
(Kaczorowski), Montreal, Quebec. Contact Simon.bacon@concordia.ca.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests: Dr. Bacon reports grants from GSK and Abbvie and personal fees from Schering-Plough, Merck, Astra-Zenica, Sygesa, Novartis,
Jansen and Bayer outside the submitted work. Dr. Campbell reports personal fees and other from Novartis Foundation and Midway Corp outside the submitted work
and being an unpaid member of World Action on Salt and Health and an unpaid consultant on dietary sodium to numerous governmental and nongovernmental
organizations. Dr. Raine has nothing to disclose. Dr. Tsuyuki reports grants from Merck Canada, Sanofi Canada and AstraZencia and personal fees from Merck
Canada outside the submitted work. Dr. Khan has nothing to disclose. Mr. Arango has nothing to disclose. Dr. Kaczorowski has nothing to disclose.

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