Reflections from the Children Healthcare Conference
Earlier this month, Ellie Adler (Director, Partnerships & Operations), Priscilla Medeiros (Knowledge Mobilization and Community Engagement Specialist), and Reshma Patel (Research Coordinator), travelled to Calgary to attend the Children's Healthcare Canada Conference. The Centre hosted a booth throughout the conference, providing an opportunity to connect with child health researchers, healthcare providers, community organizations and system leaders from across Canada. During the conference, Reshma also presented a poster highlighting her work with the SickKids Child Health Policy Accelerator.
In this feature, Ellie, Priscilla and Reshma answer a series of questions about their conference experience, takeaways and the connections they made while representing the Centre. Read the full interview below.
Q: What motivated the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Children to attend Children’s Healthcare Canada 2026, and did the conference meet your expectations?
Ellie: We attended Children’s Healthcare Canada 2026 because it offered a unique opportunity to connect with leaders from across healthcare, research, policy and community sectors who share a commitment to improving outcomes for children and youth. The conference themes of equity, learning health systems, innovation and collaboration closely reflect the priorities of the Centre.
The conference absolutely met our expectations. We left with new ideas, strengthened partnerships and a renewed sense of optimism about what can be achieved when organizations work together to address the challenges impacting the health of children and families across Canada.
Q: What was one conversation, connection or takeaway that stood out to you during the conference?
Reshma: One takeaway that stood out to me was the level of interest in connecting child health research and clinical practice with policy solutions. A conversation with two nurses from SickKids reminded that many of the challenges affecting children, from digital safety to access to medical treatments, cannot be addressed by clinicians, advocacy groups, or researchers alone. Developing effective solutions requires collaboration across disciplines, with a broad range of perspectives and experiences collectively strengthening the evidence base for policy to ultimately drive meaningful, systems-level change.
Priscilla: One conversation that stood out to me happened while I was at the booth on the second day of the conference. I spoke with a researcher from the University of Alberta about the Centre, our focus on child health equity and the work we do in community engagement and knowledge mobilization. I also shared our new Equity-Centred Community Engagement Toolkit. What struck me most was how quickly we found common ground. Although we were using different language and approaches, we were ultimately talking about many of the same principles: building meaningful partnerships, sharing power and making sure that research is responsive to community priorities. It was a great reminder that people across Canada are working toward similar goals and that there are many opportunities to learn from one another.
Ellie: I also really enjoyed the many conversations we had at our booth. It was encouraging to connect with people who were already familiar with the Centre's work, while also meeting new colleagues who were excited to learn about our work. Sharing a booth with the Child Health Policy Accelerator created particularly meaningful discussions about the continuum from research to policy to impact. Those conversations reinforced the importance of closely aligning evidence generation, policy development and implementation to achieve better outcomes for children and families. A key takeaway for me was the potential for our organizations to serve as a national example of how research and policy can work hand in hand to accelerate meaningful change.
Q: The Community Engagement Toolkit was featured at the booth. What was the response from attendees and what feedback or interest did you hear from people across Canada?
Priscilla: The toolkit was very well received at the conference. Many people stopped by the booth to learn more about it and were excited to see a resource that could support their work. One thing people appreciated was that the toolkit does not just talk about community engagement, but provides useful resources they can use right away, such as planning templates, checklists, reflection questions, case examples and additional readings.
It was encouraging to hear interest from people across Canada. Several people said they planned to share the toolkit with colleagues and use the resources to strengthen community engagement in their own projects and organizations.
Q: You presented a poster at the conference. Can you tell us about your project and what it was like sharing your work with a national audience?
Reshma: I presented a poster on Enforcing Child-Centred Digital Safety: Charting Canada’s Legislative Path with International Best Practices on behalf of the SickKids Child Health Policy Accelerator. The poster showcased key findings from a white paper developed in collaboration with the Canadian Paediatric Society. The paper examined online safety legislation and regulatory approaches in peer jurisdictions to identify opportunities for strengthening protections for children and youth in Canada. Through an environmental scan, we developed four evidence-informed recommendations to support a Canadian legislative framework that prioritizes child and youth safety in digital spaces.
As one of the few policy-focused presentations at the conference, the poster offered an opportunity to explore how evidence can inform legislative and regulatory approaches to complex child health issues. Presenting to a national audience sparked meaningful conversations with health leaders from across the country. Many expressed their appreciation for the work being done at SickKids to advocate for children and youth at a federal level, while others eager to learn how they could contribute to these efforts by sharing their clinical experiences and insights from their own jurisdictions.
For me, the experience highlighted the strong appetite among child and youth health professionals in helping bridge the gap between pediatricians and policymakers to advance better outcomes for Canadian children and youth.
Q: What did you learn from other child health organizations, centres or networks that could inform the Centre’s work moving forward?
Priscilla: One thing I learned from the conference was that community engagement is top of mind for many child health organizations. It came up repeatedly in presentations and small group conversations, with people asking similar questions about how to build authentic, meaningful partnerships with patients, families and communities.
What stood out to me was that while many centres or organizations are trying to strengthen their engagement efforts, the Centre has already invested in the infrastructure to support this work. Through our grants, training opportunities, events and resources, we are helping researchers develop the skills to engage communities in meaningful ways.
The conference highlighted that community engagement is an area where the Centre can continue to lead, share what we have learned and build new collaborations with organizations that are working toward the same goals.
Q: From a partnership perspective, what opportunities or connections emerged from the conference that you are most excited about?
Ellie: One of the most exciting opportunities to emerge from the conference was the chance to strengthen our relationship with Children's Healthcare Canada as a whole. As a national convening organization, CHC plays a critical role in bringing together leaders from across healthcare, research, policy, and community sectors around shared priorities for children and youth. In a country as geographically dispersed as Canada, it can be challenging to bridge regional and organizational silos. Strengthening our partnership with CHC creates opportunities to align efforts, share knowledge, and accelerate collective action on the issues that matter most to children and families.
One of the most exciting opportunities to emerge from the conference was the chance to strengthen our relationship with Children's Healthcare Canada. As a national convening organization, it plays a critical role in bringing together leaders from across healthcare, research, policy and community sectors around shared priorities for children and youth.
Q: What is one word you would use to describe this year's conference, and why?
Reshma: Grounding. Hearing many different community voices, including Indigenous storytellers, parents navigating the healthcare system, and frontline responders, offered perspectives I do not often encounter in my day-to-day work and reinforced the importance of centering community voices and lived/living experiences in upstream solutions.
Priscilla: Inspiring. I left with new ideas for advancing community engagement in child health research and a greater appreciation for the role the Centre can play alongside other centres or organizations working toward similar goals.
Ellie: Connected. This year's conference brought together people from across disciplines, sectors, and regions who share a commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of children. The presentations and conversations emphasized the importance of working across organizational and geographic boundaries, and I left with a strong sense that meaningful progress will come from deeper connections between research, policy, healthcare delivery and communities. The conference highlighted both the challenges we face and the collective capacity we have to address them together.