2025 Agenda

False claims can go viral in minutes, sometimes with very negative consequences. Healthcare communicators are facing this every day, and they see the challenges growing and becoming more difficult.

Adding to this, a new directive from Health Canada is positioning communicators as the responsible party to face down growing challenges in countering misinformation and disinformation that threaten public trust, vaccine uptake, and evidence-based care.

This session will explore how Canadian healthcare organizations can proactively manage misinformation on social media, respond to trending false narratives, and build lasting credibility with the public.

Balance speed with accuracy, support clinicians as trusted messengers, and leverage digital tools to safeguard the integrity of healthcare communication.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Understand how Health Canada is taking a leading role in pushing back on misinformation and disinformation.
• Learn how to detect emerging misinformation trends and craft timely, effective responses.
• Balance speed with accuracy, support clinicians as trusted messengers, and leverage digital tools to build trust.
• Explore ways to equip clinicians, patients, and influencers to share accurate, relatable healthcare messaging.

Is your organization meeting technical accessibility requirements but still failing to connect with Indigenous communities? This business-critical presentation reveals how conventional accessibility approaches miss crucial cultural dimensions that directly impact your organization’s effectiveness.

Through data-driven case studies and implementation frameworks, you’ll discover how leading organizations are gaining competitive advantage by incorporating Indigenous perspectives into their accessibility strategy.

Learn how to evaluate your current content through a cultural lens and implement practical changes that transform compliance into genuine inclusivity with measurable business results.

Key Business Outcomes:

• Identify overlooked barriers in your organization’s communications, visual identity, and interfaces
• Understand the business impact of culturally-informed accessibility on community engagement
• Learn implementable frameworks for evaluating and improving your accessibility approach
• Discover strategic enhancements that create measurable improvements in engagement
• Gain practical tools for immediate implementation across your content ecosystem

Social media is an essential tool for patient and public engagement. Its effective use can have incredible benefits; its ineffective use can be detrimental to your goals.

And while we all consume social media and have seen some great examples of how to use it well, in practice, this remains challenging. This discussion will break through the noise and try to parse the value of social media, and how it can be used more effectively and positively.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• What content is your audience looking for, and how has it shifted over time
• How should it be delivered – on which platform, and in which tone, for which audience
• What constitutes effective social media, and is it replicable or must it be organic

Healthcare organizations across Ontario and Canada are facing one of the most competitive recruitment landscapes in decades. From physicians and nurses to allied health professionals, the demand for talent continues to outpace supply. Today’s recruits are looking for more than just competitive pay; they’re seeking workplaces that reflect their values, provide practicalities, support career growth, and prioritize culture and belonging.

This session will explore how healthcare organizations can strengthen their recruitment strategies through branding, storytelling, and targeted campaigns. Drawing on lessons from multiple recruitment initiatives across the healthcare sector, we’ll share what’s working today, what recruits care about most, and how organizations can stand out in a crowded market.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Insights into what healthcare recruits in Ontario and across Canada are looking for in today’s job market.
• Best practices for branding and recruitment campaigns that resonate with healthcare professionals.
• How to design recruitment initiatives that not only attract but also engage and retain top talent.

Strong, strategic relationships with government partners are essential to driving innovation, securing funding, and aligning with system-wide priorities. This session explores how healthcare organizations can elevate their mission by engaging meaningfully with ministries and regional health authorities. It will examine how trust, timing, and clarity of message can transform government relations from a reactive function into a proactive leadership asset.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How to align your mission with ministry and health authority priorities to create win-wins
• How to craft compelling, relevant proposals that resonate with healthcare funders
• How to build and leverage long-term trust and credibility with government stakeholders

This session explores how generative AI, like ChatGPT, is reshaping the role of communicators—not by replacing them, but by giving them the opportunity to elevate their thinking, creativity, and leadership.

As AI takes on more tactical writing tasks, it creates space for professionals—especially early-career communicators—to develop core leadership skills like delegation, strategic framing, and critical thinking, transforming AI use into a powerful training ground for deeper intellectual engagement and thoughtful direction.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How AI empowers communicators to move beyond tactical content into strategic, big-picture thinking.
• How Prompting AI effectively teaches leadership skills such as clear direction, feedback, and synthesis.
• The future of communication values depth of thought over flawless prose—making space for more inclusive, idea-driven leadership.

In many healthcare organizations, communications functions across the hospital, foundation, and research institute operate independently, often leading to siloes in messaging, missed opportunities, and competing priorities.

At Health Sciences North, we are intentionally charting a different path. With the amalgamation of three foundations into one unified Foundation in 2024, we also began aligning communications, brand, and public affairs functions across the hospital, the Health Sciences North Research Institute, and the Foundation.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How unified leadership is driving a single, strategic communications vision across the hospital and Foundation.
• How alignment across hospital, research, and Foundation is building one voice and brand.
• How breaking down silos is strengthening engagement and enabling regional impact.

Digital health tools hold enormous promise, whether for patient engagement, clinical decision support, or workflow efficiency. Yet, the success or failure of these tools rarely hinges on the technology itself. Instead, adoption is determined by how well organizations communicate change to the clinicians and patients who must live it every day.

Introducing a new digital solution represents a fundamental workflow transformation. For clinicians, this means adjusting long-established practices and integrating new behaviors into already complex care delivery. For patients, it means placing trust in new methods of accessing, receiving, or understanding care. Without clear, empathetic, and continuous communication, even the most advanced tools risk rejection or underuse.

When healthcare communication leaders position digital introductions not as “new tech” but as workflow transformations that change the daily lives of clinicians and patients, they become critical catalysts for safer, smoother, and more successful digital health adoption.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Framing digital transformation so that clinicians and patients see the “why,” not just the “what.”
• Addressing resistance through transparent messaging, storytelling, and two-way feedback loops that support co-design.
• Building trust by translating technical change into human value—smoother workflows for providers, more empowered experiences for patients.
• Ensuring communication is consistent, accurate, and tailored to multiple audiences.

Communicating health and life sciences in today’s fast-paced and often polarized landscape requires more than just accurate facts — it demands clarity, empathy, and credibility. In this panel conversation, seasoned communicators from across the health and life sciences sectors will share real-world experiences, challenges, and insights on translating complex and sometimes sensitive topics for a wide range of audiences.

From breakthrough research and public health guidance to emerging technologies and system-level change, the panel will explore what it takes to build trust, foster understanding, and support knowledge translation in an environment where attention is short and skepticism is high. While misinformation remains part of the backdrop, this session focuses on the proactive role communicators can play in shaping narratives, fostering connection, and helping their organizations lead with confidence.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• Clarity in Complexity: Gain insight into how experienced communicators approach the challenge of distilling scientific and technical content into clear, engaging narratives that support knowledge translation across sectors and audiences.
• Credibility in Action: Learn how organizations can communicate difficult or evolving information while maintaining transparency and trust — especially in high-stakes or uncertain environments.
• Audience-Centered Strategy: Walk away with examples and perspectives on tailoring health and life sciences messages for different stakeholders, including policymakers, researchers, patients, media, and internal teams.