My Healthy Nova Scotia Command Center
One place to run the Nova Scotia PHIT Score Card: province vs. Canada on every measure, the four NS Health zones, the three main cities and rural Nova Scotia, all 18 counties, and the Cape Breton University intern teams building the data feeds.
Command Overview
Nova Scotia's headline numbers, each set against Canada. Every number carries its source. Where Nova Scotia does worse than Canada the gap is shown in red; where it does better, in green.
Intern Team · Cape Breton University
Two student teams from Cape Breton University's Shannon School of Business build this Command Center as their IDEAS Project, led by Dr. Rob Gillio. Each student can own one Canadian feed end-to-end, so every intern ships something real that shows up on the Score Card.
The teams
Everyone on the CBU roster is tied to this Command Center. When a student registers, they land in the CBU Virtual Classroom and their team group automatically.
Six roles, six feeds
6-week sprint
Tick a week when it ships. Each tick pays out a coin.
Loading team progress…
Seats at the Table
Who the Nova Scotia Command Center is for, and the first thing each seat would use it for. Cape Breton University is an active partner; the others are target partners, not signed ones.
Nova Scotia PHIT Score Card
What a Nova Scotia Specialty Score Card looks like: the same 4 Lenses as every PHIT card, with a Nova Scotia → Canada comparison on each tile in place of the US state → nation ladder.
(benchmark)
How it's scored: each tile = 50 − (relative gap vs Canada × 150), capped 0–100, the same benchmark formula as the Maricopa Command Center. This is the benchmark component only (40% of a full PHIT Score). Trend arrows and sparklines are now wired from the StatCan, PHAC and life-table time series; the target component switches on once Nova Scotia targets are agreed with the seats. Bands: ≥70 Strong · ≥50 Watch · below 50 Act now.
Top Concerns
The five priorities the data points to. These are candidates: confirm them against the NS Department of Health and Wellness Action for Health plan and NS Health priorities before publishing.
Health Zones · Need a Family Practice Registry
Nova Scotia Health runs four management zones. These are StatCan health regions 1201 to 1204, so CCHS data can also be pulled at zone level. Below is the number of people still waiting for a family practice on .
Health by zone · CCHS 2023/2024
Statistics Canada publishes the Canadian Community Health Survey for each NS Health zone as a two-year estimate. Red means worse than the Nova Scotia average, green means better. Click any column to sort.
| Measure | Western | Northern | Eastern | Central | Nova Scotia |
|---|
Regions & Municipalities · 3 cities + Rural
Nova Scotia split four ways: Halifax, Sydney, Truro and Rural Nova Scotia. Each region is built from Nova Scotia Health's community health networks, the smallest level the Need a Family Practice Registry reports every month, so the waitlist numbers here are real and add up to the provincial total. Health survey numbers are only published by zone, so each card also shows its zone's CCHS estimate, clearly labelled.
The 14 health networks
| Health network | Region | Zone | Population 2025 | Waiting Sept 1 | Change since Aug 1 | % waiting |
|---|
All 49 municipalities + First Nation communities
Nova Scotia has 49 municipalities: 4 regional municipalities, 25 towns, 9 county and 11 district municipalities. It has no incorporated cities today; Halifax, Dartmouth and Sydney were cities until they joined the regional municipalities in the 1990s. Nova Scotia's 13 Mi'kmaw First Nations hold 16 reserve communities with published counts; they are listed separately, with population and age only (see Communities & Data Rights).
| Municipality | Type | County | Region | Population 2021 | Population 2016 | Change | Median age | Age 65+ | Age 0–14 |
|---|
County Watch · 18 counties
Counties (census divisions) are Nova Scotia's county-level equivalent. All 18 now carry the 2021 Census profile: population, growth since 2016, median age, and the share of seniors and children. Health survey numbers are not published by county, so the zone each county sits in is shown instead. Click any column to sort.
| County | NS Health zone | Population 2021 | Change since 2016 | Median age | Age 65+ | Age 0–14 | Child poverty 2023 | Zone registry waitlist |
|---|
REAL Census: Statistics Canada 2021 Census, table 98-10-0022-01 (counts randomly rounded to 5). Nova Scotia overall: median age 45.6 vs 41.6 for Canada; 22.2% aged 65+ vs 19.0%. Child poverty: CCPA-NS 2025 Report Card. Annapolis (35.0%) and Digby (34.6%) are the highest in the province. The county-to-zone mapping is CURATED because Hants is split between zones.
Communities & Data Rights
Two groups have their own data, and we only use it with their permission.
🪶 Mi'kmaw communities (13 First Nations)
First Nations health data in Canada is governed by the OCAP® principles: the community has ownership, control, access and possession of its data. The Score Card shows nothing at the community level unless a community chooses to share it. The first step is a relationship conversation, not a data request.
PARTNER-LED✊🏾 African Nova Scotian communities
Nova Scotia has more than 50 historic African Nova Scotian communities, and the province has only recently started collecting race-based health data. Any panel here is co-designed with community health organizations such as the Health Association of African Canadians.
PARTNER-LEDCanadian Data Sources
Where things stand: the PHIT system holds no Canadian provincial data yet. Canada currently appears only as a single country row, in the World Bank benchmarks and the international comparison charts. This catalog lists what we would wire for Nova Scotia. Most of it is free, needs no API key, and has a direct US counterpart that we already use.
| Status | Source | Publisher | Lowest geography | Access | Refresh | What it feeds |
|---|
US → Canada crosswalk
| PHIT uses in the US | Canadian equivalent | Note |
|---|
Wiring Plan
The order to wire the feeds in so the Score Card goes from Data Panel to Live, one phase per intern sprint block.
/api/canada is FFH's own Canadian data reader. ?set=ns pulls StatCan WDS (13-10-0905, 13-10-0972, 13-10-0837, 11-10-0018) and the PHAC opioid file, cached for a day. ?set=aqhi pulls ECCC air quality, cached for 10 minutes. No keys, no third-party services. The page shows the verified Oct 19 snapshot first, then flips each tile to LIVE when the engine answers. The interns now extend the engine rather than start it.Phase 1 · Weeks 1–2 — StatCan backbone Core done
The engine already pulls CCHS by province and zone, life expectancy and child poverty. Interns add population estimates (17-10-0009) and deaths by cause (13-10-0394) to api/canada.js, and check every tile against the StatCan table viewer.
Phase 2 · Week 3 — Nova Scotia feeds
Nova Scotia's Open Data portal runs on the same SODA API as data.cdc.gov, so our existing connector carries over. Add the monthly Family Practice Registry scraper. The ECCC Air Quality Health Index tile is already live.
Phase 3 · Week 4 — County layer
Population and age for all 18 counties and 49 municipalities are already loaded. Interns add income and housing from the 2021 Census profile, then add Nova Scotia to the PHIT Peer Group as a size-tier peer.
Phase 4 · Weeks 5–6 — Partners & hand-off
Opioid harms from PHAC are already live. Add CCDSS chronic disease from PHAC and system performance from CIHI. Start the 211 Nova Scotia aggregate-referral ask. The interns present to the seats and write the hand-off to the next cohort.
Sources & Gaps
✅ Sourced on this page
🔌 Wired on Oct 19, 2026 (was NEEDS_SOURCE)
- WiredChild poverty, NS vs Canada: 22.7% vs 18.3% (2023), StatCan T1FF table 11-10-0018, the same CFLIM-AT method Campaign 2000 uses
- WiredOpioid deaths per 100k: NS 7.0 vs Canada 13.7 (2025, preliminary), PHAC Health Infobase
- WiredRegular health care provider: NS 78.1% vs Canada 82.6% (2024), CCHS table 13-10-0905
- WiredPopulation and age profile: all 18 counties, all 49 municipalities and 16 Mi'kmaw reserve communities, 2021 Census table 98-10-0022
- WiredHalifax, Sydney, Truro, Rural: each card now carries its zone's CCHS estimate. CCHS is not published by city, so these are labelled zone estimates
- WiredCCHS by zone: 11 measures for all four zones, table 13-10-0972 (the replacement for 13-10-0113, which StatCan stopped after 2021)
- LiveAQHI: 7 Nova Scotia stations against 124 nationally, ECCC, refreshed hourly
- WiredTrend direction: 15 tiles now carry a trend arrow and a NS vs Canada sparkline
⏳ Still open
- City-level health survey data: StatCan does not publish CCHS below the zone, so a true Halifax-only number would need a custom tabulation request
- Median age for the 9 county municipalities (StatCan publishes them in pieces; we add up the counts, but medians can't be added)
- CCDSS chronic disease (PHAC) and CIHI wait times and system performance (Phase 4)
- NS Open Data (Socrata) connector and an automatic monthly Family Practice Registry scraper
- 211 Nova Scotia referrals, and Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian health data (partner-led only)
