Toronto Public Health’s Strategic Plan Progress Dashboard

Last Updated June 2025
Toronto Public Health‘s Strategic Plan 2024-2028 serves as the guiding blueprint to navigate key priorities, ensuring the continued delivery of impactful programs and services to the diverse population of more than three million residents in Canada’s most multicultural city.

This dashboard showcases the key actions that contribute to successfully implementing our Strategic Plan, and highlights Toronto Public Health’s progress towards its vision of a city where all people can be healthy and thrive. The Status and Progress Updates are refreshed twice a year to reflect TPH’s advancement on the related action item.

Summary of Actions

2/22 Key
Actions

Complete

Action is complete, and all milestones have been achieved.

18/22 Key
Actions

On Track

Action is occurring according to schedule.

2/22 Key
Actions

Upcoming

Action is scheduled to begin at a later reporting period.

0/22 Key
Actions

Delayed

Action has begun and is behind schedule.

0/22 Key
Actions

Paused

Action has been paused.

Priority 1: Strengthen Health Protection, Disease Prevention, and Emergency Preparedness

Objectives	Actions	Status	Progress Updates
Prepare for and respond to outbreaks and public health emergencies informed by best evidence and lessons learned from previous responses.	Develop and implement a multi-year emergency exercise strategy and schedule, which incorporates latest evidence, best practises and lessons learned.	Upcoming	Planning activities for this work are expected to begin in Q4 2025.
Enhance emergency preparedness and response infrastructure.	Establish process for identifying and mitigating health hazards associated with mass gatherings.	On Track	Identifying and defining risks related to mass gatherings, and assessing how the City collects information related to planned events is underway. Implementing a pilot assessment process in Q4 2026.
Effectively communicate with the public about how they can protect their health.	Reinforce TPH as a reputable and credible source of public health information and services.	On Track	Planning is underway for a website content audit to ensure public health information is up-to-date, consistent, relevant, inclusive and citizen-centric for implementation in Q3 2025. Planning is underway for a public education campaign to address health misinformation, disinformation and malinformation for implementation in Q4 2025.
	Launch multi-channel public awareness campaigns focused on disease prevention, health protection and services provided by public health.	On Track	Activities to support health protection and promotion through proactive and reactive multi-channel public education campaigns in multiple languages (e.g., measles, routine vaccination, food safety, harm reduction, sexual health, dental and oral health services, etc.) are ongoing.
Monitor and prepare for climate change and collaborate with partners to address its impacts.	Develop and implement a climate change surveillance framework to better assess risks of climate change to the health of Torontonians.	On Track	Developing a phased public health climate change surveillance framework. Phase 1, which includes available exposure and health data, to be launched in Q1 2026. Ongoing stakeholder consultations conducted since 2024.

Priority 2: Promote Health and Well-Being Across the Lifespan

Objectives	Actions	Status	Progress Updates
Reduce the burden of chronic and infectious diseases across the lifespan.	Provide public health guidance to inform and advance municipal initiatives and policies related to chronic disease prevention.	On Track	Collaborating with the Poverty Reduction Office on food security initiatives (e.g., monitor the cost of living in Toronto for low-income households). Collaborating with Toronto Public Library to improve public access to credible health information (e.g., Your Health Matters Book recommendations).
Prioritize effective interventions for children and youth to meet their changing needs.	Increase access to healthy growth and development services for underserved populations.	On Track	Expanded Into Kids Health program, a collaboration with Toronto schools to create healthy school environments in equity deserving communities, to 30 new schools in 2024/2025. Added two new breastfeeding clinics, and extended hours at two existing clinic sites.
Advise on aging in place and age-friendly communities.	Collaborate on the development of the Toronto Seniors Strategy 3.0 through the Toronto Seniors Accountability Table.	On Track	Providing fall prevention training to help reduce the risk of falls in older adults. Partnered with the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging to implement EMBOLDEN research study in Toronto. Partnering with Seniors Services and Long-Term Care and the Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation (TSHC) to pilot health education at TSHC sites.
Advocate for healthy social, natural, and built environments and collaborate with partners on initiatives that advance these goals.	Collaborate on strategies such as Vision Zero and Safe TO, to promote the well-being and safety of residents and communities	On Track	Participating in Vision Zero Delivery Partners Network, Micromobility Safety Working Group and Toronto Area Safety Coalition. Collaborating with SafeTO partners to promote mental health and prevent violence. Engaging with 8 80 Cities to promote healthy built environments.

Priority 3: Promote the Conditions to Support Positive Mental Health and Reduce the Harms of Substance Use

Objectives	Actions	Status	Progress Updates
Deliver public health interventions that respond to the drug toxicity epidemic.	Partner to deliver training, education, clinical services, and supplies to prevent drug toxicity deaths and decrease risks of hepatitis C, HIV and other infections.	On Track	Offered supervised consumption, drug checking, and an urgent public health needs site until March 31, 2025. Following the closure of supervised consumption sites, harm reduction services transitioned to an outreach model. Providing safer drug use education and treatment services to clients. Providing naloxone and safer drug use training to partner agencies.
Reduce harms associated with the use of alcohol, cannabis, tobacco and vapour products use.	Reduce youth access to tobacco and vapour products.	On Track	Conducting test shopping to ensure compliance with tobacco and vaping regulations. Using progressive enforcement to reinforce regulatory oversight and posting compliance results online.
	Provide current, public-facing data on the use of alcohol, cannabis, tobacco and vapour products and their associated harms.	Complete	Launched the Public Health Status Indicators dashboard in 2024, which includes indicators on alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, and vaping. Guidance and information on substance use and their associated harms is maintained on public-facing web pages.
Strengthen public health services that are trauma-informed and reduce stigma.	Offer training to all front-line staff on trauma-informed approaches to delivering public health services.	Upcoming	Identifying training approaches. A training plan will be developed.
Deliver public health interventions that promote mental health.	Improve referral pathways to quality mental health supports for populations and neighborhoods experiencing barriers to access, through work with health and community service providers.	On Track	Launched the Downtown CORE Team Pilot in December 2024, jointly led with Toronto Police Service. The pilot facilitates referral pathways to mental health services for those experiencing homelessness and who may also experience challenges with mental health or substance use.

Priority 4: Advocate to Advance Health Equity

Objectives	Actions	Status	Progress Updates
Assess and report on health inequities and population health needs.	Implement the Sociodemographic Data Collection Plan.	On Track	Formed a working group to implement client-level sociodemographic data collection to understand who we are serving and address inequities in service access, experience and outcomes. Selected an initial public health program area. Creating data collection questions based on the Data for Equity guidelines and using an existing client management data system.
Collaborate with partners across multiple sectors to address local health needs.	Collaborate with the Indigenous Wellness Committee for an Indigenous-led Action Plan.	On Track	Formed the Indigenous Wellness Committee in April 2024 in collaboration with 16 Indigenous service providers. Regular committee meetings have been held over the past year. Co-developing the Action Plan with a focus on mental health and substance use.
	Provide secretariat support for the Our Health, Our City Implementation Panel to advance mental health and substance use priorities.	On Track	Identifying and advancing mental health and substance use priorities through the Our Health, Our City Implementation Panel. The Panel met in March and May 2025 and is scheduled to meet three more times in 2025.
Share evidence, advocate, and collaborate to influence actions that impact population health.	Build and share a dynamic dashboard that shows trends and characteristics of local population health information.	Complete	Launched the Population Health Status Indicators dashboard in 2024, which shared dynamic indicators with sociodemographic data. Refreshed all topics and indicators in Q1 2025. Reviewing and refreshing indicators annually where possible.

Priority 5: Nurture a Positive Workplace Culture

Objectives	Actions	Status	Progress Updates
Foster a culture of innovation, continuous improvement and learning.	Develop and implement a workforce development strategy to support staff.	On Track	Developing strategies to upskill staff and support leadership growth. Delivering leadership training aligned to TPH’s Strategic Plan goals. Planning for strategy development will be completed in Q4-2025.
Develop and retain a skilled and diverse workforce.	Launch a formal succession planning framework that encourages growth and development for all employees.	On Track	Developed a succession planning framework. Identifying key roles and talent with leaders to support long-term workforce sustainability.
Foster a welcoming and inclusive work environment.	Build upon and implement infrastructure to support effective employee engagement, such as employee wellness and recognition experiences and working groups.	On Track	Established employee wellness and recognition working groups to support employee engagement. Developing inclusive programs and infrastructure to enhance employee experience.
Optimize collaboration across Toronto Public Health for greater impact.	Regularly communicate Toronto Public Health priorities across the organization in order to improve collaboration and learning.	On Track	Regularly communicating through internal newsletters, messages from the Medical Officer of Health, the intranet and People Leaders. Optimization of internal communications will be based on latest Employee Engagement Survey results in collaboration with TPH People Services.