Ottawa Public Health’s Strategic Plan 2023-2027

Our strategic plan will help focus our efforts by setting strategic priorities over the next four years.  Through a common understanding of the vision, mission, and goals, a strategic plan provides a template for all employees, partners and interested parties to make decisions to move the organization forward.

Core Purpose: Vision, Mission, Commitments

Vision:

Mission:

Commitments:

Reconciliation: 
We are guided by the principles of respect, relationship, reciprocity and reflection as we work in partnership with Urban Indigenous Peoples – including First Nations, Inuit, Métis peoples and communities – to promote social justice and advance Indigenous rights and wellbeing.

Health equity: 
We identify and address systemic barriers to increase health equity in urban, suburban and rural communities in Ottawa.

Healthy and inclusive workplace: 
We foster an equitable, diverse, and inclusive workforce in service to the community and promote a psychologically healthy and safe workplace culture.

Meaningful engagement & relationships: 
We build genuine and lasting relationships with partners and residents to collaboratively foster a healthy community.

Evidence-informed: 
We apply best available evidence, including community voice and local data, to identify issues impacting the community and continuously improve and innovate our work.

Impactful: 
We aim to strengthen our organizational performance and optimize our resources to better serve the community, while tracking our progress through measurable outcomes. 

The Strategy demonstrates Ottawa Public Health’s dedication to equity, prevention, and impact which guides our efforts as we work in partnership to achieve our Strategic Goals.

Equity driven
Being equity driven means bringing public health services and interventions closer to communities facing the greatest barriers. It means building trust with communities to be a part of the solution in influencing the conditions and environments around them to support the health and wellbeing of all.

Prevention focused
Being prevention focused means leveraging all available opportunities to shift our work to address root causes of poor health to create the conditions that support a healthy community and individual decisions. This work must be done in collaboration with partners and policy decision makers.

Impact maximizing
Being impact maximizing means using our resources effectively to create the greatest amount of change. This also means having the right people, skills, and resources to do the work.

Strategic Goals:

Equity Driven: 
In working to improve population health outcomes and opportunities, we collaborate to eliminate health inequities, systemic racism, discrimination and oppression.

Create Conditions to Live Well and Thrive: 
Influence changes in the built, natural and social environments that promote health and wellbeing, and address the impacts of climate change. Essential to this is the interconnection between health and nature.

Promote Wellbeing and Reduce Harms: 
Advance innovative and comprehensive approaches to promote mental health and substance use health while reducing stigma; and decreasing harms associated with substance use and addiction across the lifespan.

Focus on Prevention: 
Gather, analyze and share evidence on local health needs and inequities with the healthcare system to strengthen clinical prevention. We will engage with healthcare system partners to help inform decision-making.

Enrich our Workplaces: 
Foster a diverse, inclusive, equitable and healthy workforce grounded in a culture of learning and growth. We will support and develop employees and optimize and innovate our processes to better serve the community.  

Resources:

OPH’s Strategic Plan 2023-2027