Program and public policy

This document is intended to provide relevant information to Canadian public health professionals and administrators, as well as to others who wish to undertake and sustain intersectoral activities fostering health and equity in the context of budget cuts. It outlines challenges, opportunities, and strategies to be considered when implementing or sustaining intersectoral action for health and equity in the context of budget cuts.

It is now well recognized in public health that intersectoral action is a relevant factor in ensuring that the missions of health prevention and promotion are carried out and that complex and multifactorial problems are addressed. In addition to the usual challenges associated with collaboration, actors wishing to implement or sustain intersectoral action are sometimes confronted with a significant issue, namely budget cuts. Because intersectoral action depends on adequate and stable funding and strong government support, periods of fiscal austerity,…

Short overview of pan-Canadian initiatives related to public health training capacity since the early 2000s

According to information gathered, in the aftermath of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, the National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health (Naylor Committee) reported that a thorough review of public health training programs was needed and that new entrants to the public health workforce would have to be appropriately qualified (Naylor & National Advisory Committee on SARS and Public Health, 2003). Following recommendatio…

This document identifies and analyzes 85 training initiatives (workshops, webinars, guides, courses, conferences) focused on the Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach. It aims to provide a portrait of the training initiatives offered and to suggest ways to improve upon this offer, with a particular focus on the Canadian context. The report provides a brief quantitative analysis as well as an in-depth qualitative analysis of the following dimensions of the training corpus: objectives and competencies, training mode and pedagogical approaches, conditions that support or hinder HiAP implementation, benefits and limitations, implementation tools and principles, previous experiences with HiAP, as well as the historical context. This analysis revealed several patterns in terms of the content covered. In general, the training initiatives analyzed provide a comprehensive overview of the foundations of the approach and its implementation principles. They tend to emphasize a vision of HiAP f…

As Canada deals with the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the biggest public health challenges of our time, the need to strengthen public health systems has never been greater. Strong public health (PH) systems are vital to ensuring health system sustainability, improving population health and health equity, and preparing for and responding to current and future crises. There are considerable variations across provinces and territories in how public health is organized, governed and financed, as well as in how public health systems have been reformed and restructured in recent years. This report builds upon prior reports and describes Alberta’s public health system prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, including its organization, governance, financing, and workforce. It is part of a series of 13 public health system profiles¹ that provide foundational knowledge on the similarities and differences in the structures of public health systems across province…

The wellbeing approaches studied, with their reference frameworks and associated wellbeing indicators, are policy instruments for the entire government apparatus. Although these approaches have only recently been introduced and have been the subject of few evaluations, they appear promising. They are based on a vision of social, human, economic and environmental progress and rely on measurements that complement those of economic growth and GDP. Their adoption is intended to support what matters most to people, namely their wellbeing. 

The main features common to the wellbeing approaches of these central governments are:

• They are intended to be whole-of-government approaches, i.e., they involve the entire government apparatus, as well as other actors (departments, governmental and paragovernmental agencies, private sector actors, research groups, civil society, etc.).
• They view wellbeing as a multidimensional concept (e.g., with psychological, social, e…

The Profiles of Public Health Systems in Canada are part of a research project titled Platform to Monitor the Performance of Public Health Systems, led by Principal Investigators Dr. Sara Allin, Dr. Andrew Pinto and Dr. Laura Rosella from the University of Toronto. The project involves the participation of knowledge users, collaborators and an inter-disciplinary team of scholars from across Canada, and aims to develop a platform to compare public health system performance across Canada. To achieve this aim, the project comprises three phases:

1. Produce detailed descriptions of the public health financing, governance, organization, and workforce in each of the 13 provinces and territories using a literature review with results validated by decision makers.
2. Conduct a set of comparative in-depth case studies examining implementation and outcomes of reforms, and their impacts on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. Define indicators of pub…

This tool is based on the Framework for analyzing public policy developed by the NCCHPP, to which additions were made by a team from the INSPQ's Direction du développement des individus et des communautés based on a brief and non-exhaustive review of various tools with similar purposes. An appendix was al…

The Profiles of Public Health Systems in Canada are part of a research project titled Platform to Monitor the Performance of Public Health Systems, led by Principal Investigators Dr. Sara Allin, Dr. Andrew Pinto and Dr. Laura Rosella from the University of Toronto. The project involves the participation of knowledge users, collaborators and an inter-disciplinary team of scholars from across Canada, and aims to develop a platform to compare public health system performance across Canada. To achieve this aim, the project comprises three phases:

1. Produce detailed descriptions of the public health financing, governance, organization, and workforce in each of the 13 provinces and territories using a literature review with results validated by decision makers.
2. Conduct a set of comparative in-depth case studies examining implementation and outcomes of reforms, and their impacts on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. Define indicators of pub…

The Profiles of Public Health Systems in Canada are part of a research project titled Platform to Monitor the Performance of Public Health Systems, led by Principal Investigators Dr. Sara Allin, Dr. Andrew Pinto and Dr. Laura Rosella from the University of Toronto. The project involves the participation of knowledge users, collaborators and an inter-disciplinary team of scholars from across Canada, and aims to develop a platform to compare public health system performance across Canada. To achieve this aim, the project comprises three phases:

1. Produce detailed descriptions of the public health financing, governance, organization, and workforce in each of the 13 provinces and territories using a literature review with results validated by decision makers.
2. Conduct a set of comparative in-depth case studies examining implementation and outcomes of reforms, and their impacts on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. Define indicators of pub…