National Addictions Awareness Week
- Nov 17, 2025
- 2 min read
National Addictions Awareness Week brings attention to substance use health in Canada and invites a broadening of understanding with the goals of reducing stigma, prioritizing agency, and ensuring evidence-based healthcare remains accessible now and in the future.
Like all forms of health care, substance use health is a spectrum that reflects diverse experiences and levels of risk, including non-use. This model affirms that everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum. Anyone, at any point, may need substance-use–related healthcare, which makes it fundamental to community wellbeing.
This year’s NAAW theme, “Anchoring Hope,” highlights a shared belief in positive outcomes for health and wellbeing. Health promotion is possible across the substance use health spectrum and includes practices such as harm reduction, moderation, treatment, recovery, and prevention. Hope for wellbeing is not just a belief but an action. That action takes the form of meaningful investments in substance use health and commitments to evidence-based, person-centered care. Such investments depend on collaboration across communities, health agencies, practitioners, and researchers to keep diverse experiences at the forefront of healthcare practice and development.
Collaboration should extend beyond authority to include the voices of those with lived experience. A person-centered approach to substance use health requires ongoing, meaningful dialogue with youth. It calls for youth to help shape strategies that address their core needs and identify the supports that best uphold them. Seeking and centering youth perspectives fosters health-promotive conditions that strengthen safety, build trust, and reduce stigma-related barriers.
Substance use stigma hinders help-seeking, limits access to care, compromises quality care, and erodes agency, social support, self-concept, and hope for the future. Recognizing substance use as a matter of health directly challenges the stigma that misrepresents and harms people. Strengthening our understanding of substance use health equips us to better support the health and wellbeing of individuals in our lives and in our communities.
For more information and resources to support conversations with children and youth, see below.
Resources for Children & Youth Substance Use Education Curriculum Guides
Resources for Children & Youth Addressing Substance Use Disorder within Families
Resources For Adults: Substance Use Health & Stigma
