The countdown is officially on to the Canada FASD Conference 2025 and we are delighted to announce that next week the call for abstracts will be opening. Set a reminder for Monday, February 3rd to check back on our website and find out everything you need to know about this year’s abstract process.
We welcome submissions for research, program or policy abstracts (Academic Abstracts). We also welcome submissions based on lived and living experience (Personal Experience). Submissions are due no later than 23:59 EDT on Monday, March 31, 2025. We encourage you to start working on your abstract early to make sure it’s the best reflection of you and your work!
About the conference
The Canada FASD Conference is coming to Toronto, Ontario, October 21-23, 2025. The 2025 theme is Shaping the Future of FASD: From Evidence to Action.
Tickets go on sale Friday, February 14th with early bird tickets on sale until Monday, June 30th.
This national conference on FASD brings together different people from across the country and internationally who hold valuable perspectives on FASD and prevention of FASD. With over 600 attendees expected, this three-day event brings together healthcare professionals, social workers, justice and legal professionals, educators, counsellors, researchers, policy makers, and those with direct or indirect lived or living experience to connect and collaborate. This conference provides a secure and open environment to share diverse perspectives, valuable experiences, new research, and best and promising practices. We encourage you to be part of it!
Need some inspiration for what to focus your abstract on? Read on to find out more about some of the glowing feedback we received on our 2023 program.
Looking back at our 2023 conference
In November 2023, we hosted the inaugural Canada FASD Conference! This event, held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, hosted over 550 people eager to address the complexities of FASD. We sold out of tickets with over three months left to go before the start date.
The goal of our conference was to bring together people from all walks of life who are passionate about FASD. We wanted to share how research and evidence can inform tangible solutions under the theme Connect, Inspire, Innovate: From Evidence to Action.
The Program
We developed a program with this goal in mind. There were two different presentation streams: one for research, policy, and practice and another for presentations from those with lived experience.
We chose speakers with stories that connect us, projects that inspired us, and innovations that are moving the field forward. It was a feat for our team to narrow down 169 abstracts into a well-rounded program, but with a lot of discussion and many different program iterations, we managed! In total we had 57 sessions for attendees to choose from with 121 presentations on topics ranging from education to justice to diagnosis and everything in between.
When planning out the program, we did our best to create sessions that explored topics from different angles. Our program often paired a living experience presentation with a research presentation and a presentation about policy or practice so that the audience got a fuller understanding of the topic.
What the attendees thought
We felt that this was the best way forward, and it sounded like our attendees felt the same!
“I’ve been to many FASD conferences over the past decade and this was my favourite in regards to sessions. It was a nice balance, it wasn’t too complex, but nor was it too simple.”
“This was an amazing conference. There was a lot of information to take in and I’m still re-reading my notes to process all of it. It was great to have sessions specific to education/health care/justice/etc so we could choose those that were most applicable to our roles.”
In fact, most of the constructive criticisms we received were around people having a hard time choosing which sessions they wanted to go to!
Does this sound like your kind of conference? Make sure to submit your abstract after Monday, February 3rd!