Peel Region and Moyo Health & Community Services to co-design strategy addressing substance use in partnership with community
BRAMPTON, ON (June 27, 2025) - Peel Region and Moyo Health & Community Services, in partnership with community organizations, launched a co-design process for a renewed Peel Substance Strategy. The new strategy will be a community-driven response to the ongoing drug toxicity crisis with equity, inclusion and lived experience at its centre.
and Adam Chalcraft, Harm Reduction Program Director at Moyo Health & Community Services.
The strategy builds on the foundation of the 2019 Peel Opioid Strategy, expanding its scope to respond to a broader and more complex landscape of substance use. The new Peel Substance Strategy will support shared goals to improve people’s health and safety, including those in the Community Safety and Wellbeing Plan.
The drug toxicity crisis continues to take lives, impact families, and strain communities across Peel. This work is urgent and evolving so we must address it in new ways. The renewed strategy will focus on working more closely with our community partners and building solutions in partnership with those most affected.
Paul Sharma, Director of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention, Peel Public Health
Dedicated to a true co-design, the renewed substance strategy will bring together a diverse network of community organizations, health and social service providers, and emergency services to develop solutions together. To launch the co-design process, Peel Region and Moyo Health & Community Services hosted 60 partners in-person to hear from the many voices who will help shape the renewed strategy.
Partners also had the opportunity to hear from the Peel Drug Users Advisory Panel, a group of Peel residents with lived and living experience of substance use. The panel will provide ongoing critical insight for the strategy so it can meaningfully include people most impacted in system planning and decision-making.
Substance use is an extremely complex issue that intersects systemically at the individual, community and societal level. To address these complex problems, we need a variety of approaches across a wide range of areas and expertise. This strategy will build relationships across systems, services and communities to address these challenges collaboratively. Change happens at the speed of relationships and this strategy will work to foster both.
Adam Chalcraft, Harm Reduction Program Director, Moyo Health & Community Services
The completed strategy will officially launch in 2026.
Quick facts
- Peel's drug-toxicity crisis continues with 797 deaths between 2019-2024.
- In Peel, people are dying alone, with nearly half (49%) of deaths occurring when there was no one present who could intervene. This is higher than in Ontario (42%).
- In 2023, 23% of Peel students reported non-medical opioid use — nearly double the rate of cannabis use (12%) and second only to alcohol.
- Peel’s supervised consumption site opened on March 4, 2024, and closed on March 31, 2025. It was an Urgent Public Health Need Site under a federal exemption with Moyo Health & Community Services as the operator and WellFort Community Health Services as the Clinical Lead.
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About Peel Region
Peel Region works with residents and partners to create a healthy, safe, and connected Community for Life for approximately 1.5 million people and over 200,000 businesses in Brampton, Mississauga, and Caledon. Peel’s services touch the lives of residents every day. For more information explore peelregion.ca and follow us on X @regionofpeel and Instagram @peelregion.ca.
Media contact
Akilah Downey
Communications Specialist
Peel Region