Canadian Health Network

The Canadian Health Network (CHN) was a national, bilingual health promotion service operated by the Public Health Agency of Canada and major health organizations across Canada. It was an on-line collaborative service and includes health information providers such as national and provincial/territorial non-profit organizations, as well as universities, hospitals, libraries and community organizations. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) is the workplace health affiliate.

CHN offered dependable, up-to-date information on health promotion and disease and injury prevention, to help individuals and communities make healthy choices that improve the quality of their life. It was known to be of the most comprehensive networks of its kind in the world. It was a called a 'network' since the information was amalgamated from a variety of Canadian health organizations.

In November 2007, the Public Health Agency of Canada announced that effective March 31, 2008, the Canadian Health Network will lose its funding.

Anti-abortion advocates frequently targeted the CHN with angry mail; the CHN, through its affiliates, contained health information that covered all topics in a politically neutral fashion meaning that information on abortion but also information on adoption and maternal health information was equally available (online information did not counsel readers to pursue options, only descriptive and scientific information was provided). For this reason, it has been widely suspected that the Conservative government cancelled the program to appeal to its Christian-populist voter base.

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