Heal Canada is helping to shape a stronger, more informed and collaborative patient advocacy ecosystem—one in which patients and caregivers are recognized not only as recipients of healthcare, but as valued partners in its design, delivery and evaluation.
Founded by patient advocate and healthcare leader Cheryl Petruk, Heal Canada is a national, patient-centred organization guided by three interconnected pillars: Empowerment, Engagement and Education. Through these pillars, Heal Canada creates opportunities for patients, caregivers, patient organizations, healthcare professionals, researchers and industry partners to work together to improve healthcare experiences and outcomes.
Heal Canada’s initiatives include patient and caregiver research, quality-of-life surveys, patient advisory councils, educational programs, webinars, podcasts, white papers and digital publications. Its flagship publications, E3 Advocacy Magazine and My Blood My Health, provide accessible information, elevate lived experience, and encourage more meaningful dialogue across the healthcare system.
A key part of this work is CACHEducation Academy, Heal Canada’s educational platform for building patient advocacy knowledge, skills, and leadership capacity. The Academy offers structured training for individuals who want to become more effective patient advocates and partners within healthcare. Its introductory Patient Advocacy Training Program has already supported four cohorts, with participant satisfaction in each cohort exceeding 80 percent. Advanced, self-directed learning opportunities are expanding the program’s reach and supporting advocates at different stages of their development.
CACHEducation Academy addresses an important need within the advocacy ecosystem: developing informed, confident, and well-prepared patient partners. Its training helps participants understand healthcare systems, research, governance, communication, collaboration, ethics and effective engagement with decision-makers. It also helps patient advocates move from sharing individual experiences to using lived-experience knowledge to contribute to broader organizational and system-level improvement.
Together, Heal Canada and CACHEducation Academy help create the conditions required for meaningful patient engagement. They connect lived experience with evidence, education and leadership development while supporting patients and caregivers to participate more confidently in research, policy, healthcare improvement and value-based healthcare initiatives.
This work closely reflects ICHOM’s commitment to measuring and improving the outcomes that matter most to patients. Meaningful outcomes cannot be identified, measured or improved without meaningful patient participation. By strengthening advocacy capacity and creating platforms through which patient voices can inform healthcare decisions, Heal Canada and CACHEducation Academy are helping to ensure that patients are not simply consulted, but are equipped and supported to serve as genuine partners in building more responsive, equitable and outcomes-focused healthcare systems.
