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State of the Sector Report

  • All
  • COVID-19
  • Cross-Sectoral Connections
  • Equity, Diversity & Inclusion
  • Health, Wellbeing & Development
  • Indigenous Peoples and Place-Based Outdoor Play
  • Outdoor Play Environments
  • Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play
  • Professional Development
  • Research & Data Collection
  • Safety & Outdoor Play

Physicians in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario can now prescribe a Parks Canada Discovery Pass to their patients for the purposes of promoting physical and mental health. A new collaboration between PaRx, an initiative driven by health care professionals that promotes routine access to nature for health benefit, and Parks Canada has led to this...

Thank you to Jan Ellinger, PhD Candidate at Technical University of Munich, Germany, Dr. Christoph Mall, Researcher at Technical University of Munich, Germany, and Dr. Mads Bølling, Researcher at Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Denmark, for providing this post.  A major silver lining of the global pandemic has been the broad reengagement with the outdoors, including at...

Over the next few months, OPC's Dr. Mariana Brussoni will be presenting a number of webinars on the benefits of risky play for children's health and development. Keep reading to learn more about where, when, and how to attend! On January 31st at 9:00 am ET, Dr. Brussoni will be presenting on 'The health issue of...

This article was originally published in the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society's Caring for our Children Newsletter. Thank you to Rachel Ramsden, PhD student, and Dr. Mariana Brussoni, Associate Professor, from the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia for providing this post. “It’s too cold!” “It could be dangerous!” “It’s so much easier...

The Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA) workshop series 'Gender Equity in Recreational Sport' is an educational series that aims to help build organizational capacity in four areas: organizational culture change and shared commitment, creative community engagement, facility design to attract and encourage use, and evaluating outcomes. This series is in direct alignment with the...

ReImagine RREC (Renew, Retool, Engage, Contribute) is a national COVID-19 recovery initiative led by the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA) and its partners and is supported by Sport Canada and the Government of Canada. As part of this initiative, the organizers of ReImagine RREC are hosting a series of virtual workshops on topics related to...

This post comes from Ms. Alison Whiting, Research Analyst with the Engineering Health Lab, University Health Network   A research team based at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network in Toronto, is conducting a study on national/provincial park accessibility in Canada. The intended outcome of this research is to make recommendations to improve access at these...

From 4-5pm EST on December 14th, 2021, Outdoor Play Canada’s Research Manager, Dr. Louise de Lannoy will moderate US Play Coalition’s monthly #WePlatChat online learning event. The conversation, held on Twitter, will focus on what we can collectively do to promote, protect, preserve, and invest in outdoor play environments.   Join us here on Twitter to contribute to...

This article was originally published by PlayCore. The world’s population is changing. The global population aged 60 years or over numbered 962 million in 2017, more than twice as large as in 1980 when there were 382 million older persons worldwide. The number of older persons is expected to double again by 2050, when it is projected to reach nearly 2.1...

Thank you to Dr. Tanya Halsall (University of Ottawa) and Dr. Louise de Lannoy (Outdoor Play Canada) for providing this post. This article was originally published in The Conversation. An important incidental change that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic has been our collective rediscovery of the outdoors. As we begin building back better, we have an opportunity...