June 9, 2015
For Immediate Release
OTTAWA – Health Canada wishes to thank the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) and the work of its Expert Panel for the comprehensive report, Health Product Risk Communication: Is the Message Getting Through?.
Health Canada communicates risk regularly as part of its role in protecting and promoting health. The Department recognized that there is a global knowledge gap when it comes to evaluating the effectiveness of risk communications and requested that the report be prepared to help fill that information void. Canada has an opportunity to take international leadership in defining and applying best practices for evaluating and improving the effectiveness of its own risk communications.
The report provides input towards the development a roadmap that builds on efforts underway to better communicate health product risks and make information easier to find and use. Through the Regulatory Transparency and Openness Framework, Health Canada is making information more accessible and understandable for Canadians. It includes initiatives like plain-language labelling to ensure health product labels and packages are clear, accurate and easy to understand, and making plain-language summaries of safety reviews available on its website, so that Canadians can know more about Health Canada’s health product safety review findings and the actions that have been taken to minimize risks.
It also includes initiatives like the Drug and Health Product Register, a new web tool designed to provide Canadians with easier access to consumer-friendly information on medicines and vaccines, such as what a drug is used for, safety warnings and precautions, and side effects. As well, Health Canada has improved how it shares information with health professionals through its Health Product InfoWatch newsletter.
As well, work to put Vanessa’s Law into action is ushering in a new era of transparency around patient safety information. As part of this, Health Canada consulted Canadians and healthcare professionals to find out the types of drug safety information they are looking for when making informed health decisions and conducting health safety research. The goal is to better understand Canadians’ information needs in order to develop new tools and regulatory approaches that most effectively meet those needs.
Canadian families need and deserve credible, easy-to-understand information in order to make the best possible choices for their health and safety. Health Canada is working continuously to make improvements not only in our health product risk communications, but in all the information we share.
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