HeartWise Observatory.
The HeartWise Observatory is a youth-focused research and knowledge hub dedicated to understanding the heart-health experiences, needs, and challenges of young people. By collecting community insights, sharing accessible research, and highlighting important trends, the Observatory helps turn evidence into stronger education, advocacy, and future HeartWise initiatives.
- Canada
- Pilot jurisdiction
- 2 reports
- Understand + ACT · 2026
- Aug 31, 2026
- Evidence cutoff
- 4 priorities
- Named in ACT
Track. Understand. Act.
Three connected parts — data, research, and policy. Nothing here is invented, every number carries its source, and where the evidence runs out, the Observatory says so.
Youth-focused, youth-led
Research framed around the heart-health experiences, needs, and challenges of young people — and driven by them.
Verified, always
The first phase draws only on existing published data from trusted public sources, cited every time.
Built to expand
Canada is the pilot jurisdiction; the focus can move to a new country without rebuilding a thing.
Three things worth knowing.
Two pictures and one game from the 2026 report, each doing one job. Every one carries the report’s own source and limitation — the Observatory never shows a number without them.
Explore 01
Still seen by a cardiologist?
100 children born with congenital heart disease in Quebec in 1983. Drag the age from birth to 18; the slider only stops where the study measured.
At the start, all 100 in cardiology follow-up.
Show as a table
| By birthday | No cardiology follow-up | Still followed |
|---|---|---|
| 6th | 28% | 72% |
| 13th | 47% | 53% |
| 18th | 61% | 39% |
| 18th, most severe lesions only | 21% | 79% |
“Tracking that cohort forward, researchers found that 28 percent had not received cardiology follow-up by their sixth birthday, 47 percent by their thirteenth, and 61 percent by their eighteenth. Even among those with the most severe lesions, the group for whom ongoing cardiology follow-up matters most, only 79 percent had been seen by a cardiologist after turning 18.”
Source & limitation
Source Understand: Canada 2026, Investigation 05 (Reference 19: Mackie et al., Children and adults with congenital heart disease lost to follow-up: who and when? Circulation 2009;120:302–309).
Important limitation The evidence is also old and geographically narrow: the cohort was born in 1983 and tracked using data available up to roughly 2005, it describes Quebec rather than Canada as a whole, and cardiac care, transition programming, and health system navigation have all changed since then. It should be read as strong evidence that this kind of discontinuity can and did happen in a well-documented Canadian population, not as a current national prevalence figure.
Explore 02
When a heart stops outside a hospital
The national number every school AED sits inside — Canadians of all ages, which the report is explicit is context, not a youth statistic.
Heart & Stroke, 2024 · Reference 23
~60,000out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year in Canada
~1 in 10survive
That is one every nine minutes. In Heart & Stroke’s words: “Doing CPR and using an AED can double a person’s chance of survival.”
Source & limitation
Source Understand: Canada 2026, Investigation 06 (Reference 23: Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Every Second Counts: Transforming Resuscitation to Restart More Hearts, 2024).
Important limitation This figure describes all ages and is used here strictly as national context, not as a youth statistic. An earlier, commonly cited estimate of roughly 40,000 annual events appears to reflect, at least in part, changes over time in how these events are counted and reported, rather than a true increase in how often cardiac arrest occurs; nothing in the evidence reviewed here supports treating the difference between the two figures as a genuine rise in incidence.
Explore 03
Find the AED
Canada cannot say how many of its schools have a working, accessible AED (Data Gap 06). Steer the heart through this 8-bit school and find the one here before the clock runs out.
Find the AED
You have 60 seconds. Where’s the AED?
Steer the heart with the arrow keys or WASD — on a phone, use the on-screen pad. The clue at the top runs from Freezing to Scorching as you get closer. Walk into the AED to find it.
Source & limitation
Source Understand: Canada 2026, Investigation 06 and Data Gap 06 (References 24–28). Cardiac-arrest figures on the ending screen: Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, 2024 — all ages, Canada; only the 60,000 and 1 in 10 figures appear in the report (Reference 23).
Important limitation Data Gap 06: “Provincial and territorial policy statements, legislation, and funding program descriptions, addressed in Investigation 6, but this review did not identify a consolidated dataset confirming actual on-the-ground implementation.” The school here is a cartoon, not a real building, and the four AED spots are typical placements drawn from school cardiac-emergency guidance (Project ADAM, American Heart Association), not a Canadian requirement.
The research report.
Seven investigations, six findings that survived the evidence test, and a register of what Canada cannot yet see — written to be read by anyone, not just researchers.
Understand: Canada 2026 · First edition, pilot report
What Canada knows, and does not yet know, about the cardiovascular health of its young people.
35 pages · Evidence cutoff August 31, 2026. Read it in the HeartWise reader, or download the PDF.
Canadian cardiac emergency readiness policy, by jurisdiction
The matrix from Investigation 6: what each province and territory has formally committed to on public-access AEDs and school CPR/AED curriculum — not what is in place on the ground.
Categorical status only. PRESENT indicates confirmed legislation, regulation, or official mandate; PARTIAL indicates a funding program, non-binding policy, or requirement covering only part of the relevant schools or age range; NOT IDENTIFIED indicates that no clear, current, official source could be located, which reflects a limit of this review’s search rather than confirmation that no policy exists; UNCLEAR indicates conflicting or ambiguous information. Each of Canada’s thirteen provinces and territories is listed separately; none are grouped. This matrix reflects the most recent identified official source as of the evidence cutoff of August 31, 2026, and should be independently reverified before any operational use. No numerical score or provincial ranking is implied or provided, and a PRESENT rating describes a formal policy requirement only, not confirmed on-the-ground implementation.
| Jurisdiction | Public-access AED policy | School AED / CPR-AED curriculum |
|---|---|---|
| British Columbia | Evidence confidence: partial ministerial order and ministry policy, not standalone legislation; secondary school target date passed, elementary/middle target not yet due as of evidence cutoff ref. 27 | Evidence confidence: present mandatory Grade 10 curriculum component ref. 27 |
| Alberta | Evidence confidence: unclear indications of a public-access defibrillation funding program, but no citable, current official source | Evidence confidence: unclear |
| Saskatchewan | Evidence confidence: unclear | Evidence confidence: unclear indications of a school-focused cardiac-readiness initiative, but no citable, current official source |
| Manitoba | Evidence confidence: present Defibrillator Public Access Act ref. 24 | Evidence confidence: partial schools among designated public locations ref. 24 |
| Ontario | Evidence confidence: partial Defibrillator Registration and Public Access Act enacted; staged implementation ref. 25 | Evidence confidence: unclear |
| Quebec | Evidence confidence: not identified no public-access legislation located | Evidence confidence: unclear indications of a school AED installation initiative, but no citable, current official source |
| New Brunswick | Evidence confidence: not identified | Evidence confidence: not identified |
| Nova Scotia | Evidence confidence: present Defibrillators Act ref. 26 | Evidence confidence: unclear indications of school AED funding, but no citable, current official source |
| Prince Edward Island | Evidence confidence: not identified no public-access legislation located | Evidence confidence: present mandatory secondary curriculum component ref. 28 |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | Evidence confidence: not identified | Evidence confidence: not identified |
| Yukon | Evidence confidence: not identified | Evidence confidence: not identified |
| Northwest Territories | Evidence confidence: not identified | Evidence confidence: not identified |
| Nunavut | Evidence confidence: not identified | Evidence confidence: not identified |
Not a scorecard. Categorical status only — reverify against current official sources before any operational use.
The policy report.
Four headline policy priorities: two ACT NOW and two BUILD THE CONDITIONS. Each one asks an institution that already has real authority in this space to do something specific and measurable.
ACT — Canada 2026 · A policy companion to UNDERSTAND
From Evidence to Action: Policy Directions for Youth Cardiovascular Health in Canada
25 pages · Policy status verified September 6, 2026. Read it in the HeartWise reader, or download the PDF.
- 01Evidence confidence: Status: act now
A current view of youth cardiovascular health
Assess the feasibility of a recurring youth cardiovascular reporting framework
- Who can act
- Public Health Agency of Canada; Statistics Canada
- Action
- Assess feasibility of a recurring youth-specific reporting framework using existing data sources.
- 02Evidence confidence: Status: act now
Measure whether CHD transition actually happens
Develop a nationally consistent measure of pediatric-to-adult congenital cardiac transfer
- Who can act
- Canadian Adult Congenital Heart Network; Canadian Cardiovascular Society
- Action
- Develop a nationally consistent transition/transfer measure.
- 03Evidence confidence: Status: build the conditions
Make specialty access comparable
Develop a common definition and pilot comparable reporting before considering a benchmark
- Who can act
- Canadian Institute for Health Information; cardiology and pediatric cardiology bodies; provincial/territorial partners
- Action
- Common definition and pilot reporting for referral-to-assessment time; benchmark only later.
- 04Evidence confidence: Status: build the conditions
Verify school cardiac-emergency implementation
Verify and report implementation, without treating policy adoption as proof of readiness
- Who can act
- Relevant ministry or school-system authority in each jurisdiction with a requirement
- Action
- Transparent verification and reporting of implementation, not just policy presence.
Not a headline priority: Indigenous youth cardiovascular measurement (governed by the HeartWise Governance Commitment) and pan-Canadian congenital heart disease data infrastructure (tracked on the System-Building Watchlist).
Where ACT does not recommend policy change
Restraint is not a gap in this document. It is a deliberate output of applying the same evidentiary standard to plausible-sounding ideas that ACT applies to the recommendations it does make.
Universal ECG screening of Canadian youth
Mandatory blanket ECG screening of student athletes
Provincial cardiac-readiness rankings
Treating jurisdictions rated NOT IDENTIFIED as unprepared
A single national youth sudden-cardiac-arrest rate
HeartWise-designed Indigenous cardiovascular targets or interventions
Broad claims that geography produces inequitable cardiac care for all Canadian youth
Partner with the Observatory.
Researchers, clinicians, health authorities, sponsors, and media: the 2027 edition’s research priorities are already named. Help answer them.