Health Promotion

Cullbridge™ has extensive experience in two overlapping areas of health promotion: social marketing, and environmental health (including indoor environments).

We created and publish the widely acclaimed social marketing Web site, Tools of Change: Proven Methods for Promoting Health and Environmental Citizenship (see sidebar to the right) and are recognized internationally as a leader in the development of community-based social marketing approaches.

Representative Experience

For additional projects, see also our pages on air , landscaping, transportation, household hazardous waste, and  water. Using the annotated alphabetical list below, you can select project summaries, and/or link directly to some examples of our work. 

Envirodesic™ Certification Program.  Provided a variety of market research,  strategic alliance development, and media relations services for a certification program that identifies low-emission building and maintenance products.

Environmental Illness  Conducted research to estimate the economic and social costs of environmental illness in Canada.

Healthy Housing  Helped Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) develop a national communication strategy for its Healthy Housing initiative, which places a focus on occupant health.

Healthy Schools  Helped develop the website at www.healthyschools.com

Healthy Indoors  Cullbridge helped birth and provides ongoing Executive Director services to the Healthy Indoors Partnership, a not-for-profit organization that promotes healthier indoor environments in Canada through multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Pesticide Reduction Best Practices.   Researched the relative effectiveness of outreach approaches being used in Canada, USA and Europe for reducing the cosmetic use of pesticides on residential property, both with and without legislative intervention (e.g. pesticide by-laws.) In collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention.

Pesticide Round Table and Public Education Strategy Blueprint.  Co-sponsored, helped organize, and presented a session at the Forum on Public Education Strategies to Encourage Gardening for Life.  The forum included over 25 participants selected from across Canada, and took place over two and a half days. Participants discussed education strategies, and developed a Public Education Strategy Blueprint that will enable municipalities and community groups across Canada to encourage Canadians to reduce the cosmetic residential use of pesticides. In collaboration with Go for Green.

Synthesis of the Community Animation Program (CAP) Provided a national synthesis of the approaches taken and lessons learned from CAP, a community-based environmental health animation program, run cooperatively by Environment Canada and Health Canada. 

Tools of Change Web site  Founded on the principles of community-based social marketing, this site links a growing bank of case studies and ‘lessons learned’ with planning guides and worksheets, to help program planners and implementers learn more quickly from their collective experience. It highlights approaches that have been particularly successful so that they can be replicated and built upon, as well as "turnkey" programs that have been ‘pre-packaged’ for use by others. The site is full of examples that are presented to each user in a customized manner, according to his or her interest profile. Users can save their planning work between sessions, and can download the resulting draft plans and work summaries to common word processors for further refinement. The site currently hosts 30 full health promotion case studies. 

Voluntary Initiatives  Co-authored a report covering the legal aspects of indoor air quality in Canada, market drivers and barriers, reviews of selected voluntary initiatives, expert interviews, an analysis of barriers and key elements for success, and a proposal for a national strategy emphasizing voluntary initiatives.

Workplace Health  Assisted Toronto Public Health in designing its approach to workplace health promotion. Conducted three separate phone surveys of: (1) other public health units in Canada and the USA, (2) Toronto workplaces, and (3) internal stakeholders.