PHO Connections – November 2026

TOPHC 2026 – Register Now

Registration now for TOPHC 2026: Northern Insights to Public Health, taking place virtually on November 25, 2026.            
This free, half-day event will bring together public health professionals, researchers, learners and community partners from across Ontario to explore public health priorities and community-driven approaches through a Northern lens.
The program features three timely sessions:

• Responding Together: Public Health and First Nations Partnerships During Wildfire and Flood Season Evacuations
• Nurturing Algoma: Driving Comprehensive Health Promotion through Community-Based Early Developmental Surveillance
• Lessons from Blastomycosis: Strengthening Outbreak Preparedness and Response in Indigenous Communities

Join us to hear from subject matter experts and community leaders, learn from real-world experiences, and explore practical approaches that can strengthen public health practice, preparedness and collaboration across Ontario.

Register now and join the conversation. Visit the TOPHC website to secure your spot today.

Respiratory Virus Resources

Respiratory virus season is underway. Check out our Ontario Respiratory Virus Tool for updated weekly epidemiological information on respiratory virus activity in Ontario, including COVID-19, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and other respiratory viruses. The tool is updated every Friday.

You can also visit our new 2026–27 Respiratory Season Resources page, which brings together data, reports, guidance documents and educational resources in one convenient location.

Now Available: Enhanced analysis: Tuberculosis in Ontario

Despite being preventable and curable, tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the deadliest infectious diseases globally. PHO remains committed to its prevention, detection, and treatment. The latest PHO report on tuberculosis in Ontario includes a “In Focus” section on HIV status among TB disease cases reported from 2016 to 2025. Co-infection with HIV is a critical risk factor for progression from TB infection to TB disease, yet fewer than half of reported cases in iPHIS had a documented HIV status reported. These findings highlight data gaps and opportunities to improve reporting.

New PHO Report: Cigarette Use in Ontario: Patterns of Inequality and Projections to 2035

Who is most affected by cigarette use in Ontario, and how may smoking patterns change over the next decade?

PHO’s latest report Cigarette Use in Ontario Patterns of Inequality and Projections to 2035 examines disparities in cigarette use across population groups and projects smoking trends through 2035. The findings can help inform tobacco prevention and cessation efforts and support action to reduce smoking-related harms and inequities.

The report found that cigarette smoking in Ontario has declined substantially and is projected to reach 4.2% by 2035, if current trends continue. The projected decline shows continued progress toward Canada’s target of less than 5% tobacco use by 2035. However, declines may not be experienced equally across population groups, and future trends remain uncertain as patterns of tobacco and nicotine use evolve.

In Case You Missed It: National Infection Control Week 2026

National Infection Control Week (NICW) took place from October 19-23, highlighting the important role of infection prevention and control (IPAC) professionals, health care workers and frontline staff play in supporting safer care across all health care settings. 

Although NICW has ended, its focus on strengthening IPAC practices continues throughout the year, with hand hygiene remaining a foundational IPAC practice. Our new Hand Hygiene Program provides an evidence-based, practical approach to strengthening and sustaining hand hygiene practices in all health care settings. The program includes an Implementation Guide and resources focused on education, environmental supports, habit formation, team-based problem solving and auditing. 

If you were unable to attend one of the PHO Rounds sessions during NICW, you can watch the presentations at the links below: 

• Trends and Insights from IPAC Lapse Investigations Supported by Public Health Ontario 
• Introducing PHO’s Modernized Hand Hygiene Program: Evidence-Informed Strategies for Improvement  

To learn more about NICW and our new Hand Hygiene Program check out this PHO News post. 

World AMR Awareness Week, November 18-24

World AMR Awareness Week (WAAW) is a global campaign observed annually from November 18 to 24, to improve awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and promote the importance of antimicrobial stewardship. WAAW encourages best practices among the general public, health professionals, and policy makers to avoid the further emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections.

Public Health Ontario (PHO) champions antimicrobial stewardship to optimize therapy and improve patient outcomes in primary care.

Join us for PHO’s upcoming Rounds on November 18: Taking the Bite Out of Tooth Pain: Using Antibiotics Wisely in Dentistry
Discover the latest evidence on appropriate antibiotic prescribing in dental practice. This session will cover:

• Key recommendations for safe and effective use
• Strategies to manage patient expectations through clear communication
• Practical tools to integrate stewardship principles into everyday care

Register today to strengthen your approach to antibiotic stewardship in dentistry.

Surveillance Reports

Recently updated routine reports:

• Invasive Group A Streptococcal (iGAS) Disease in Ontario: October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026
• Legionellosis in Ontario: January 1 to October 27, 2026
• Measles in Ontario
• Mpox in Ontario: January 1 to September 30, 2026
• SARS-CoV-2 Genomic Surveillance in Ontario: October 5, 2026

News

Our News page features posts on a variety of public health topics. Our most recent posts include:

• National Infection Control Week 2026: IPAC is Powered by You
• New Hand Hygiene Program Has Launched!
• Tell Me More Series: Public Health Surveillance

Research Publications

Our Research Publications page features research by PHO experts on a variety of public health topics. Our most recent publications include:

• Sex-based differences in heavy episodic drinking among adults in Canada, 2017–2023: a repeated cross-sectional analysis
• Trends in population attributable risk of Clostridioides difficile infection associated with common outpatient antibiotics in Ontario, Canada, 2017–2024
• Short report: Agreement between individual- and area-level measures of socioeconomic status (SES) in Canada
• Public health unit perspectives on challenges, barriers, and lessons learned from Ontario’s 2024–2025 measles outbreak: a mixed-methods survey | Canadian Journal of Public Health | Springer Nature Link
• Association Between Neighbourhood-level Antibiotic Utilization and the Rate of Community-Associated C. difficile (CA-CDI) Infection: An Ecological Study | Clinical Infectious Diseases | Oxford Academic
• Rebuilding wellbeing in public health: a qualitative study of physician burnout and recovery in Canada | BMC Public Health | Springer Nature Link
• Impact of a large measles outbreak associated with transmission in the Americas and Canada’s loss of measles elimination status: descriptive cohort study | The BMJ
• Genomic diversity of human-associated Mycobacterium bovis in Canada | Microbiology Spectrum
• The Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Quality Improvement (PHEP-QI) Intervention: Co-Creation and Pilot-Implementation of the PHEP-QI Intervention in Canada | Research Square
• Is 28 days of doxycycline still justified for canine Lyme arthropathy? A call for a randomized controlled trial in: Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association Online Early | AVMA Journals

Events

• November 10: PHO Rounds: Celebrating 40 Years of the Ottawa Charter, Part 3: Setting Community Priorities for Health Promotion
• November 12: PHO Rounds: The Return of Measles: Lessons from Canada’s Largest Outbreak in Decades
• November 17: PHO Rounds: Advancing Evidence-Based Antibiotic Prescribing in Canada: The Canadian Antibiotic Treatment Guidance Initiative
• November 24: PHO Rounds: Development of a Priority Populations Identification Framework