Welcome
Healthy Environments for Learning Day (HELD) 2026: Outdoor Learning Settings.
Thursday April 23, 2026
CPCHE and 50+ signatory organizations are calling for leadership and action to ensure that all children in Canada have access to healthy, sustainable and climate-resilient outdoor learning and play environments.
Children thrive outdoors.
There is robust research showing that children are healthier, more active, learn better, have improved social interactions and better mental health when they have ample time in natural outdoor settings. Outdoor learning and play improve children’s physical, cognitive, social and emotional health.
Learn more
- Canadian Public Health Association: Children’s Unstructured Play Position Statement
- What is the Relationship between Risky Outdoor Play and Health in Children? A Systematic Review
- Resurrecting free play in young children: looking beyond fitness and fatness to attention, affiliation, and affect
- The importance of play in promoting healthy child development and maintaining strong parent-child bonds
- Examining outdoor play associations in Canadian early learning and child care centres: Cross-sectional insights from the Measuring Early Childhood Outside survey
But not all children in Canada have access to healthy and natural outdoor spaces in their schools and child care programs.
A lack of policy leadership, guidance and targeted investments alongside land-use pressures (e.g., urbanization) and the increasing use of artificial surfacing are reducing children’s access to healthy and natural learning/play spaces. Climate change and escalating use of plastics and other synthetic materials in learning/play environments are posing new and expanded threats to children’s health and well-being. And the impacts of these are disproportionately affecting children from under-served and marginalized neighbourhoods.
Learn more
- Artificial Turf and Other Synthetic Surfacing: Risks for Children’s Health and the Environment
- Statistics Canada: Census of Environment: Urban greenness
- Health Canada: Health of Canadians in a Changing Climate: Advancing our Knowledge for Action
- UNICEF: Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index
- Lawson Foundation: Increasing Outdoor Play in Early Learning and Child Care in the Context of COVID-19
- Chief Public Health Officer of Canada’s Report on the State of Public Health in Canada 2020: From Risk to Resilience: An Equity Approach to COVID-19
Solutions exist. Leadership and action are needed.
Robust evidence about the benefits of children spending time outdoors and in nature is pointing the way forward. We need to chart the path to get there. Guided by a shared vision, we need targeted investments in quality settings, integrated climate resilience measures, a balanced approach to risk and safety, and reconnection with and within nature through land-based learning. In fact, many of these solutions are already being demonstrated by schools and child care settings across the country.
Learn more. Get involved. Find out how to join the HELD 2026 Collective Call to Action!
Learn more
- HELD 2026: Collective Call for Action
- CCCF & CPCHE: Healthy and Sustainable Child Care Environments: A Vision for Canada
- Outdoor Play Canada: 2025 Position Statement on Active Outdoor Play
- Child Care Now: Spotlight: Why physical environment matters in child care
- Environment and Climate Change Canada: Canada’s National Framework for Environmental Learning
- National Program for Play Area Safety: Fundamentals of Thermal Comfort and Safety Designing Climate-Ready Playgrounds
- Evergreen Canada: Climate Ready Schools Guide to Child-Friendly Participatory Design
- Child & Nature Alliance of Canada: Risk Benefit Assessment for Outdoor Play: A Canadian Toolkit
Funder
CPCHE gratefully acknowledges the support provided for the 2026 Healthy Environments for Learning Day campaign by:
