Photo: Martin C. Barry Silvet Ali
Dr. Nicole Damestoy, public health director at the Agence
de la santé et des services sociaux de Laval, takes a
breath test during a demonstration of data gathering for Statistics Canada’s National Health Survey in Laval.

Over the last few weeks, hundreds of residents of Laval have been participating in interviews at home, before visiting a mobile medical clinic set up in the parking lot outside a hotel just off the Laurentian Autoroute. While it may seem a little mysterious, in fact it’s all part of the Canadian Health Measures Survey, a large-scale analysis of the health of Canadians that the country’s national statistical agency is conducting over a period of two years. Laval is the fourth stop on the CMHS’s cross-country tour.

Participants pre-selected
Prior to arriving here in late January with two large trailers, the Statistics Canada crew spent time in the Ontario cities of Ottawa, Oakville and Brantford. The survey is collecting direct physical measures from more than 400 pre-selected Laval residents. Until the beginning of March, the participants will be going to the clinic trailers outside the Quality Suites Laval, where tests will be conducted and blood and urine samples will be tested for chronic and infectious disease markers, nutritional status and environmental contaminants. After Laval, the Statistics Canada team will be on the road heading across the country until August next year.

A health ‘portrait’
During a recent visit by the Laval News to the Statistics Canada installation, Dr. Nicole Damestoy, public health director at the Agence de la santé et des services sociaux de Laval, was on hand to explain how the information gathered will help create an overall picture of the public’s health. Damestoy said the Laval health agency often produces its own “portraits” of the local public health based on valid scientific data, and Statistics Canada’s Health Measures Survey, although much larger, is nonetheless similar.

Results in 2012
Laval was one of 16 cities chosen at random for the survey from hundreds of locations in Canada. However, because it is a national survey, no specific findings pertaining to Laval will be among the results when they are published. Although the surveyors will be evaluating the participants’ health, they are not mandated to make any formal diagnoses. Instead, the participants will be informed of any health problems that become apparent in the results of the tests, and they will be notified by phone or by letter that they should seek help from medical professionals. The survey’s results are expected to be released in 2012.

Most extensive survey
The CMHS is the most extensive national survey on physical health measures ever conducted in Canada. The results are expected to deliver a wide picture of the health of Canadians by gathering baseline data on a variety of concerns, including cardiovascular health and nutritional status. A total of 5,700 Canadians will be making up the representative sample. Laval is part of a second cycle of the survey. A first cycle took place from 2007 to 2009. “The combination of interviews and physical measurements will produce more accurate statistics about the general health of Canadians than have ever been available before,” said Jeanine Bustros, director of Statistics Canada’s Physical Health Measures Division, who travelled to Laval to oversee the survey’s implementation here.