In 2025, Public Health Sudbury & Districts’ work was defined by the power of small actions creating meaningful, lasting ripples across communities within our service area. Together, these stories show how thoughtful, sustained efforts can extend far beyond a single moment, creating positive impacts that continue to grow.
Responding to measles: Prepared, proactive, and community‑centred
When measles cases began to increase across the province, our response started with preparation, before any urgency might arise.
Long before the outbreak reached our service area, teams across Public Health were planning, training, and coordinating to ensure readiness. For example, we worked with local primary care providers and hospitals to develop emergency community protocols—crucial for administering preventative treatment where needed. That proactive work allowed us to respond quickly and effectively to the North America-wide measles outbreak when it arrived in our service area in July 2025.
Trust, collaboration, and transparency
- Clear, transparent communication helped address questions, counter misinformation, and build people’s confidence in vaccination. This included working with health partners to design and mobilize emergency preventive treatment protocols, communicating with other community partners including First Nations partners and neighbouring communities, and rapid distribution of public communications, including news releases and social posts.
- We also engaged in in-person discussions with the affected communities and made dozens of home visits to answer questions, conduct testing, and offer vaccinations. Public Health staff worked non-traditional hours, including evenings and weekends, to ensure we were effectively responding to the community and residents. We also worked closely with health care providers and community partners to share responsibility for community health and ensure coordinated care and timely post‑exposure support.
- Streamlining tools and processes, such as adapting a self-assessment tool, ensured we were giving residents clear information about measles, vaccination, and next steps to take if they thought they had measles or were in close contact with someone who had measles. Including personalized engagement and care strengthened Public Health’s role as a trusted, steady presence during uncertainty.
Together, these actions strengthened relationships, improved tools and processes, and further promoted a culture of readiness. Each lesson learned has prepared us even better for what comes next, ensuring communities remain informed, protected, and resilient in the face of future public health challenges.
Supporting safe and affordable housing for all
The most complex public health challenges don’t have quick fixes. The lack of safe and affordable housing is one of them and responding effectively to such an issue starts with trusted relationships.
In 2025, Public Health continued to work alongside community partners to support residents who are unhoused. Our role is to ensure people’s health, safety, and dignity remain at the centre of every decision.
- This work often begins quietly: listening, building understanding, and strengthening relationships long before a crisis emerges.
- Through trusted partnerships, such as with the Rapid Mobilization Table group, the Homelessness Network, the Energy Court Governance Group, the Utility Disconnect Multi-Dwelling task force, the wrap around supports stream of the Community Drug Strategy, and the Manitoulin-Sudbury District Services Board, Public Health helps systems respond more effectively when urgent needs arise. This means fewer delays, less duplication of services, and reduced harm across our service area, with movement towards prevention that protects health before illness and harm occurs.
- Public Health helps spot health risks early and works with partners to implement effective solutions, making sure that health risks are understood and addressed. Examples of this work include addressing waste management to prevent diarrheal illnesses, wound care and treatment, protection against cold injuries, and follow up and care after animal bites. When inspections or concerns arise, they also create opportunities for prevention. By offering education, connecting people to services, and advocating for safer living conditions, every Public Health interaction is a chance to reduce harm and build trust.
Increasing accessibility to housing
Public Health also laid important groundwork for improving access to housing in 2025. This included building stronger relationships with housing service managers to promote preventative, health‑focused approaches, and recommending expansion of affordable housing options to the City of Greater Sudbury’s Community Emergency Services Committee. Public Health also supported the advancement of preventative measures for housing through the Community Drug Strategy. This included introducing a committee of people with lived and living experience and an Indigenous advisory committee to ensure systems, such as housing, are co‑designed alongside those most impacted.
Together, these efforts position Public Health as a central voice for safe and affordable housing. Change takes time, and while progress isn’t always immediately visible, being present and engaged matters. By visibly taking action, Public Health creates ripples of trust and collaboration, preparing communities for the future and strengthening health outcomes for everyone.
Creating spaces to learn, reflect, and transform
Throughout 2025, our agency leaned into working upstream on the social determinants of health. One powerful example of this encourages us all to look inward and to examine systems of oppression to better serve outward. As social determinants of health, colonization, racism, and white supremacy affect every person in our society. Some groups benefit and some groups are disadvantaged. Indigenous and racialized individuals, families, and communities are negatively affected disproportionately. According to Indigenous Services Canada, Indigenous Peoples in Canada experience significantly worse health outcomes compared to non-Indigenous populations (Indigenous Services Canada, 2024).
Unlearning & Undoing White Supremacy and Racism Project
The Unlearning & Undoing White Supremacy and Racism Project (Unlearning Project) was launched as an intentional opportunity for staff to reflect, unlearn, and challenge the social structures and systems that shape health outcomes.
Like a single drop of water creating ripples, this work began within our agency and examines how systemic racism, hidden biases against minority races, and colonization are embedded in everyday policies, practices, and assumptions, including within Public Health itself. The project brings greater visibility to structures that have too often gone unquestioned and can unintentionally cause harm.
This learning is not easy. It requires courage to feel discomfort, to reflect deeply, and to unlearn long‑standing norms. But within that discomfort, transformation begins. Staff engage in honest dialogue, question assumptions, and explore how supporting Indigenous self‑determination builds trust and strengthens health for everyone.
- Staff apply what they learn to their work, shaping decisions in health promotion and prevention programs to benefit community health.
- The impact, however, does not stop at our doors. Public Health staff are members of the communities they serve. Every shift in perspective and conversation with families and friends, and sometimes even strangers, about the importance of acknowledging and confronting bias has the potential to ripple outward and contributes to a world of anti-racism. Anti-racism is the understanding that racist policies and practices are the cause of racial inequities and works to dismantle the system that upholds them.
- To illustrate this, our 2025 progress report includes the following participant comment:
“This month’s learning has motivated me to move beyond awareness into action—to educate myself further, to have more difficult conversations, and to think more critically about the ways I can show up as an ally and accomplice in anti-racist work.”
This demonstrates how small moments of reflection become seeds for broader change. - Determined to expand our impact even further, we also invited members of the public and other organizations to start their own unlearning journey alongside us.
While the Unlearning Project began this past year, its purpose is longer term. Transformation takes time. By investing upstream and preparing for the future, we are creating ripples that move beyond today and toward a more equitable, trusted, and impactful public health system for all.
Building effectiveness, improving access: Vaccination in action
In 2025, Public Health took action to strengthen community protection by improving vaccine access and coverage. Public Health works with families, schools, and child care centres to help communities across our service area stay healthy and protected from vaccine-preventable diseases.
- Public Health plays a critical role in making this system work smoothly. From reviewing every child’s vaccination record, to administering and distributing vaccines, to supporting schools and licensed child care settings, our focus is on accountability, education, and transparency.
- Behind the scenes, modernizing technology systems, including streamlined vaccine record reviews and automated reminders contributed to continuous quality improvement. Offering immunization services for those without a health card helped remove barriers for families. Early and consistent collaboration with schools, child care operators, and school boards helped families understand requirements and respond on time, building trust through clear, ongoing communication.
Supporting families
Vaccine coverage among children and adolescents in our service area remains above the provincial average, with 99% compliance under the Immunization of School Pupils Act (ISPA). The table below outlines coverage percentages of ISPA related vaccinations for the 2024-2025 school year:
Vaccine coverage percentages for the 2024-2025 school year among 7-year olds
As of 2025, our service area has the highest vaccine coverage among 7-year-olds in Ontario for measles (94.1%), mumps (93.8%), and meningitis (97.1%).
This work is a direct impact of several years focused on catch-up efforts from the disruption to vaccination programs during the COVID-19 pandemic response. Catch-up work has included working with families to educate them on reporting records and offering online education sessions for parents and guardians requesting non-medical exemptions. For the first time since 2019, Public Health also reviewed vaccine records for all children within licensed child care settings.
High coverage keeps classrooms open during outbreaks, makes child care settings safer, and strengthens community health—especially protecting those most vulnerable to vaccine‑preventable diseases. When more people are protected, our whole community is stronger.
