HAAC Mission

To promote and improve the health of African Canadians in Nova Scotia through community engagement, education, policy recommendations, partnerships, and research participation.

HAAC Vision

Thriving, healthy African Canadian Communities in Nova Scotia.

HAAC Values

Commitment to Community Cooperation – Perseverance – Transparency

Compassion – Partnership – Respect – Integrity – Accountability

HAAC’s values demonstrate our commitment to an Africentric philosophy built on the Nguzo Saba Principles of:

Umoja - Unity

To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Kujichagulia – Self Determination

To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Ujima – Collective Work and Responsibility

To build and maintain our community together and make our community’s problems our problems and to solve them together.

Ujamma – Cooperative Economics

To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

Nia – Purpose

To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba – Creativity

To do always as much as we can to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani – Faith

To believe with all our hearts in our people and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

With this philosophy as foundational, HAAC promotes the health and well-being of African Canadians through a culturally competent approach that is: transparent, trustworthy, respectful, accountable, established with integrity and honest

HAAC mandate

  • Increase awareness about health issues facing African Nova Scotian and African Ancestry communities, including anti-Black racism

  • Increase representation of People of African Ancestry across all levels of the NS health system;
  • Advocate for and promote the implementation of health system data with race, ethnicity, language, and other diversity identifiers;
  • Increase research productivity;
  • Increase community education and advocacy;
  • Promote dissemination of research findings to wide audiences including community members, researchers and the various levels of government;
  • Develop strategic partnerships to build community capacity;
  • Inform policy development and make recommendations for health system policy change and action;
  • Build a strong and sustainable internal structure; and
  • Identify and apply lessons learned locally informed by systemic cultural competence

The current governance structure for the organization includes executive directors composed of six members. The executive directors report to the board. The board is comprised of fifteen members in total. The board, in turn, reports to the membership at large. HAAC is served by a staff of seven and is gradually expanding.