Social determinants of health

Indigenous peoples around the world continue to experience and have to cope with the effects of colonial policies and historical trauma on their health and development. The determinants of health approach holds promise for reducing the social health inequalities experienced by Indigenous populations, as the magnitude and severity of these inequalities call for intersectoral public health initiatives based on a thorough understanding of all the individual, collective, and structural factors…

Given the interconnectedness of jurisdictions around the world, public policies adopted to solve a problem in one jurisdiction often inspire in another the development of policies intended to solve the same problem. When public health actors propose policy options for addressing public health problems, they may include in their proposals policies that have proven effective in other jurisdictions.

The National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP) seeks to increase the expertise of public health actors across Canada in healthy public policy through the development, sharing and use of knowledge.

Because of its impact on the health of families and future generations, psychoactive substance use during the perinatal period is a public health concern for the entire population. Understanding the factors that influence psychoactive substance use among Indigenous women in the perinatal period is essential to targeting prevention and health and wellness promotion strategies for First Nations and Inuit people. This synthesis analyzes the factors that emerge from the scientific literature…

Health in All Policies (HiAP) is an increasingly important approach for systematically addressing the social determinants of health at all levels of government. HiAP refers to “an approach to public policies across sectors that systematically takes into account the health implications of decisions, seeks synergies, and avoids harmful health impacts in order to improve population health and health equity”.

In Canada, HiAP is on the radar of several governments, organizations and…

In Quebec, the deprivation index was created first and foremost to overcome the lack of socioeconomic data in most administrative databases.

Developing an ecological proxy was the only way to monitor social inequalities related to important health issues such as mortality, hospitalization and the use of health services. The proxy’s main purpose is to assign area-based socioeconomic information to every individual by linking the geography of the census with the one…

The Integrated Health and Social Services Centres (CISSS) and Integrated University Health and Social Services Centres (CIUSSS) are at the center of the twenty-two territorial service networks (RTS). The RTS are responsible for providing health care and services to their population, which includes minority linguistic communities that may face communicational obstacles.

In this report, the variables "mother tongue", "language spoken at home" and "knowledge of official languages"…