Champlain Hospitals Case Study

Champlain Hospitals launched a region-wide initiative to help patients and visitors make more nutritious food choices, starting with hospital retail food environments such as cafeterias and vending machines, where small changes can reach thousands of people.

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Faster Rollout A phased program (Bronze/Silver/Gold) helped hospitals implement changes step-by-step, building momentum across the region instead of trying to do everything at once.
Measurable Progress The program created clear standards and recognition levels, so hospitals could track implementation and show real, documented improvement.
Region-Wide Leadership By June 2015, all 20 Champlain hospitals had signed on and were actively participating, setting a model other regions could follow.

About Champlain Hospitals

Champlain Hospitals are part of a region-wide effort in Eastern Ontario to help patients, visitors, and staff make more nutritious food choices.
 
Led by the Champlain Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Network (CCPN), the Healthy Foods in Champlain Hospitals program launched in 2012 and brought hospitals together around a practical, phased approach, starting with retail food environments like cafeterias and vending machines.
 
The initiative includes 20 hospitals across the region, including The Ottawa Hospital, the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
food tray - champlain hospital case study
champlain hospital case study - hospital ward
sandwich - champlain hospital case study 2

The Challenge

How do you improve food choices across an entire hospital region when people are tired, stressed, and grabbing whatever’s quickest? That was the challenge Champlain Hospitals set out to solve.

Hospitals aren’t only feeding patients. They’re also feeding staff and visitors, and in busy, high-pressure moments, nutrition isn’t always top of mind. The team needed a practical way to make healthier options easier to access in hospital retail settings.

They also had to tackle the complexity of “food in hospitals” across many environments, cafeterias, vending machines, volunteer and franchise operations, without getting stalled by the added complexity of patient menus.

Solution Timeline

  • 1 Before MenuSano: Across 20 regional hospitals, food environments were complex, spanning everything from retail to patient food, making “healthy eating” hard to tackle at scale.
  • 2 Getting Started: The CCPN launched the Healthy Foods in Champlain Hospitals program in 2012 and began with environmental scanning to understand the current state across the region.
  • 3 The Solution: They prioritized retail food first (cafeterias, vending machines, volunteer and franchise operations) as a practical starting point, less complicated than patient menus and better for building momentum.
  • 4 Real Example: A phased recognition model (Gold/Silver/Bronze) created a clear, achievable path for hospitals to implement changes and demonstrate progress.
  • 5 The Result: The approach scaled across the region: the recognition levels were endorsed in March 2014, the first hospital achieved Bronze in December 2014, and by June 2015 all 20 Champlain hospitals had signed on and were actively participating. As of the report date, 21 of 23 hospital campuses achieved Bronze status, and two achieved Silver.

“We are essentially asking hospitals in the Champlain region to act as role models concerning the food they’re serving so that people can make their own health decisions regarding what they’re eating.”

Features Used

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Nutrition Information
Provides caloric information and the amount of sodium in each meal to support healthier choices in hospital settings.
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Ingredient Lists
Keeps ingredient lists easily accessible so consumers have full transparency.
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Healthy Food Standards
Gives hospitals examples of foods to emphasize, and foods to reduce (like processed meats and sugary drinks), to guide practical improvements over time.

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