The HEAL study is now over 10,000 participants strong
When the HEAL (Healthy Eating and Supportive Environments) study launched, the goal was ambitious: recruit 100,000 adults across Canada to build the most detailed picture of Canadian diet, physical activity, and environment ever assembled. Today, we’re celebrating a meaningful step toward that vision with 10,000 participants and counting.
This milestone belongs to you.
Every time you log into ASA24 to recall what you ate, or open ACT24 to track your daily movement, you’re contributing something new and unique. Real, detailed, population-level data from real Canadians living real lives.
From the details of what you ate for dinner to navigating the food and built environment in your neighbourhood, you’re contributing to a dataset that doesn’t exist anywhere else. And it can’t be collected without people like you showing up, again and again.
The HEAL study is currently active across CanPath’s regional cohorts, with data collection continuing through 2027. As participation grows, so does the statistical power behind the research.
This means the questions researchers can ask get sharper, and the answers get more reliable. Researchers will be able to ask about how food environments shape chronic disease, how physical activity patterns differ across Canada’s incredibly diverse communities, what it would actually take to make healthy living easier for everyone, and so much more.
Some of you are also contributing to CHARM, the companion sub-study involving blood and stool samples, helping us connect diet directly to biology. Thank you endlessly for your generosity.
This week, our team is taking a pause to reflect on all 10,000 participants. You are the most important staff behind these research project. You are why this research is working.
If you haven’t completed your surveys yet, there’s still time, or your invitation is on the way, and every response matters. If you’ve already contributed, thank you. Share this milestone with someone who might want to be part of what comes next.