Frontline Health Initiatives

These three words guide AstraZeneca's philosophy for the Frontline Health program and the initiatives we are creating and supporting. Collaboration is essential if we want to achieve our goals. The insights and skills of the practitioners and organizations on the frontlines provide guidance. They know where the needs and opportunities are greatest.

Focus of Frontline Health initiatives

Based on the insights of our frontline partners, we have organized our initiatives into three different focus areas:

Creating networks and insights
Telling stories from the frontlines
Supporting innovation and learning

Initiatives for creating networks and insights

The Frontline Health Knowledge Network is a secure virtual network that allows frontline health professionals from across Canada to connect via the Internet, enabling them to expand their professional networks and share knowledge and best practices, regardless of their location, time zone or type of medical practice. It can also accommodate the development of mentoring relationships. The pilot was completed in 2007, and created links between practitioners and students that previously were not in touch with one another. Key learnings and best practices from the pilot have been leveraged to establish the Frontline Health Forums.

The Frontline Health Forums are virtual communities made available through the Frontline Health program. The Forums allow frontline health and social service professionals, as well as students, to connect and communicate in a secure, virtual environment. Find out more about how the Frontline Health Forums are helping to build communities of practice focused on frontline issues. Learn more.

Frontline Health: A Report on Innovation in Healthcare Delivery is the result of a research project undertaken by the Canadian Policy Research Networks in partnership with AstraZeneca Canada in June 2006 to examine the state of the frontlines of health in Canada. It helped to gain a better understanding of Canada's underserved and marginalized populations, their needs, and the challenges of providing them with adequate and appropriate healthcare. Learn more.

The Frontline Health Dialogues. The first Dialogue was held in Ottawa in June 2007. It was developed by the Canadian Policy Research Networks in partnership with AstraZeneca Canada as an initiative that came out of the learnings in the Frontline Health Report. The Roundtable brought together more than 20 leaders in the field of frontline health including practitioners, researchers, academics and policy-makers from a wide range of disciplines and locations to address the question: "What will it take to make Canada a world leader in meeting the health and healthcare needs of marginalized populations?" The June 2007 roundtable set the stage for future regional dialogues – two of which will be held in 2008. These dialogues will set the stage for coordinated regional and national actions with the goal of creating an environment for accelerating innovation, strengthening communities of practice, and enhancing our ability to meet the needs of marginalized populations. Learn more.

Research collaboration on best practices in training physicians for primary care and practice in outlying, rural, and remote communities is being undertaken by a consortium of medical schools led by Dr. Paul Grand’Maison of Université de Sherbrooke and Dr. Joanna Bates of the University of British Columbia. This project will examine the diverse range of training programs and practices at medical schools across Canada with the goal of delivering the tools, best practices, and insights to further improve frontline training programs. The research will also create a better understanding of the characteristics of medical students that are predisposed to practice medicine in outlying, rural, or remote areas. The long term goal is to improve the attraction and retention of frontline physicians. This multi-year project is being funded by AstraZeneca Canada Inc. Learn more.


Canadian Professional Association for Transgender Health (CPATH) is a professional organization devoted to the healthcare of individuals with gender variant identities. AstraZeneca Canada Inc. has worked closely with the founders of CPATH in the creation of the organization. The support from Frontline Health enables health providers to maintain vital connections with each other as well as with researchers. They share knowledge and best practices through such initiatives as a monthly newsletter, the CPATH website, their online community on the Frontline Health Forums, and their first conference to be held in Toronto in June, 2008. AstraZeneca is also working collaboratively with leaders in transgender healthcare to develop e-learning modules that will help to educate and inform about transgender health care issues. Learn more.

Initiatives for telling stories from the frontlines

The Frontline Health Story Project is telling the powerful and inspirational stories of the innovative, committed professionals who serve on Canada’s frontlines of health. We believe that shining the light on what they are doing will help not only the underserved and marginalized who live on the frontlines but will also ultimately improve healthcare for all Canadians. This collection is intended as a resource of inspiration and ideas for other health professionals, for young people imagining a career in medicine, and for Canadians everywhere who want to better understand the problems of access to health services on the frontlines. To accomplish the goals of this initiative, AstraZeneca Canada is searching out inspirational frontline stories and funding a team of award-winning audio and photo journalists who are recording and telling these stories. Learn more.

Beyond Barriers: Photographs from the Frontlines of Health celebrates the remarkable compassion and ingenuity of health practitioners (doctors, nurses, social workers, and others) working on Canada’s frontlines. Captured by award-winning Canadian photojournalists (featuring Roger LeMoyne), the exhibition is a series of powerful images and captivating stories about the contributions and challenges experienced by Canada’s health practitioners. The exhibition tells the untold experiences and stories of those heroes on the frontlines who work tirelessly in street clinics, community health centres, inner city hospitals, mobile outreach units, solo rural practices and remote outposts, to find innovative and resourceful ways to meet the needs of the communities they serve. This public exhibition will tour Canada in the fall of 2009 and in 2010, on display in prominent public spaces.

Initiatives that support innovation and learning

Hope Air is a national charity dedicated to making medical treatments accessible to Canadians who live in remote areas and cannot afford the cost of air transportation. By arranging more than 53,000 free flights through commercial airlines and a national team of volunteer private pilots, Hope Air helps Canadians access non-emergency medical treatment unavailable in patients’ home communities. AstraZeneca's grant supports Hope Air's Volunteer Pilot Program that recruits and underwrites private pilots in the use of their personal aircraft to ferry financially-challenged patients and their families to major centres for essential medical services. Learn more.

Northern Ontario School of Medicine is a medical school like no other, with a strong emphasis on the special requirements of Northern Ontario. These include: a diversity of cultures - Aboriginal, Francophone, remote communities, small town rural, large rural community and regional centres; varying illness, injury and health status patterns with their specific clinical challenges; a wide range of health service delivery models which emphasize supporting local health care and interdisciplinary teamwork; and the personal and professional challenges, rewards and satisfactions of medical practice in northern and rural environments. AstraZeneca funded a bursary program that helps to ensure that no qualified student is turned away from pursuit of a medical career at Northern Ontario School of Medicine based on financial need. Learn more.

The Gerry McDole Professorship in Improved Healthcare Delivery to Rural, Remote and Underserved Populations of Manitoba, endowed by AstraZeneca in 2004, is awarded to graduate students and/or research associates in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba to support research in health policy development with the goal of improving healthcare service delivery to rural, remote and underserved Manitobans. It is named in honour of Gerry McDole, former CEO of AstraZeneca, who was born and raised in rural Manitoba. Learn more.

Support Program for Aboriginal Nursing Students (SPANS) is a one year pre-Nursing program jointly operated by the University of Lethbridge and Lethbridge College. The program offers support services and courses specifically designed to assist Aboriginal students in the Nursing Education in Southwestern Alberta (NESA) Program. AstraZeneca provided funding for an endowed fund directed towards helping student nurses pursue clinical rotations in remote and northern aboriginal communities, and measures the impact of this experience. Learn more.

The goal of the Knowledge Translation Initiative at the Li Ka-Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, is to identify the best methods of integrating proven research evidence into the activity of health-care professionals and policy makers and to ultimately provide the most appropriate service to patients and communities. A significant emphasis of this program will be on inner city health for frontline populations. AstraZeneca has provided core funding to help establish the work of this program. Learn more.

e-Learning Modules. In collaboration with frontline health professionals, AstraZeneca Canada Inc. is funding development of e-learning modules on a variety of frontline health issues including youth-at-risk, transgender populations, and the homeless. These web-based training tools allow primary care physicians and other health providers to quickly assimilate key learnings, knowledge and insights from colleagues who have expertise in these areas. Learn more.

Frontline Health: An initiative of AstraZeneca Canada