The Joannah & Brian Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition connects scholars, health practitioners, patients, and knowledge resources. Their network of experts shape health policies and guidelines, clinical practice, medical and patient education, and private-sector innovations to improve the nutrition of children, in Canada and around the world.

Nutrition has been mostly absent from medical school training in Canada and other countries for decades. As a result, nutrition now plays an undersized role in patient care at the very time that obesity rates are skyrocketing and malnutrition continues to plague vulnerable populations.

Researchers, educators and staff in the Lawson Centre are re-introducing nutrition in the MD Program at U of T. Medical students now learn about nutrition at several points, early in their training:

1. Lifestyle medicine program: This program comprises the entire tenth week of first year, and includes instruction on active living, exercise, stress management, sleep and other lifestyle factors that affect health.

2. Culinary Medicine Workshop: All first-year students visit a supermarket for a store tour and budgeting session with registered dietitians and a cooking class run by trained kitchen staff.

3. Endocrine and metabolism component: In-class learning focused on the role of diet in disorders such as diabetes and thyroid conditions.

4. Learning objectives throughout pre-clerkship: Teaching about health and disease in the first and second years of medical school now incorporates more nutrition knowledge.

Lawson Centre staff are also working to bring more nutrition content into postgraduate medical training for residents and fellows and continuing professional development for established physicians and other health care practitioners.

Our funding for Right to Food is primarily in support of prevention of chronic disease among some of the most vulnerable populations in Canada through provision of healthy foods.

Our initial funding provided unrestricted funding to help establish fifteen Community Food Centres in cities across Canada to address food security. The centres provide community spaces for people to come together for shared meals, low cost or free food to take home, cooking classes, nutrition education, and to to advocate for better access to healthy food in Canada.

We have also provided funding specifically to support partnerships with over 400 Good Food Organizations (GFO) in all provinces and territories as well as some members in the United States, Australia, and the UK. CFCC partners with these existing GFOs to convene, educate, find efficiencies by sharing best practice, and to advocate together.

We also fund FoodFit, which is a 12-week educational program where participants learn cooking skills, nutrition information, and do physical activity together. Health metrics are taken before and after the program to measure the impact on their health both immediately after the program several months later.

Our funding has supported Heart & Stroke’s efforts in advocacy, awareness, public engagement and research initiatives to shape Canada’s food policy and to create food environments that better support Canadians to eat a healthy diet.

Heart & Stroke has played a leadership role in the last decade, with our support since 2015, to ensure the adoption of three of the four key pillars from Canada’s Healthy Eating Strategy:

1. Publication of a new, internationally acclaimed Canada Food Guide

2. Elimination of trans-fat from our food supply, and;

3. Adoption of an historic front-of-package nutrition labeling initiative that will help parents make informed food purchase decisions for their kids and families.

The fourth goal is to implement regulations and legislation (Bill C252) that will restrict the marketing of unhealthy food/beverages to kids (M2K). Health Canada’s M2K policy proposal, released in April 2023 represents the first step towards the introduction of draft M2K regulations. A secondary objective of our 2023 gift is to encourage the development of a national school nutrition program.

Newfoundland & Labrador has the highest rate of diabetes and obesity of any province or territory in Canada. Despite the higher incidence of chronic illness, rural and remote communities have less access to programs that prevent and treat chronic health conditions through nutrition and fewer resources to educate people on the role of food in one’s health.

Additionally, they rely on a high percentage of foods to be imported from outside of province and are at risk of food insecurity when transportation such as ferry service is interrupted.

Chronic illness may impact the ability to maintain viable stable employment, thereby contributing to a downward spiral into poverty.

We provided the seed funding to refurbish an unused restaurant building that Shorefast owns in the town of Joe Batts Arm, Fogo Island Newfoundland. This restaurant, called The Storehouse, provides a dining option for community members and tourists featuring local, healthy traditional foods. Outside business hours it is a place for locals to build community through social programming including cooking classes, recipe-sharing, gardening tips, and nutrition workshops.