Program and public policy

In 2019, the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP) reached out to Dr. Trevor Hancock to discuss ways to introduce the core ideas of ecological economics to public health practitioners and decision makers. Some of those ideas were previously exposed in a 2015 report on the ecological determinants that Dr. Hancock led for the Canadian Public Health…

The purpose of this document is to equip public health actors to conduct an ethical analysis of policies that are said to be paternalistic. It aims to provide the conceptual tools needed to identify paternalistic policies and assess the ethical burden with which they may be associated. The document also offers practitioners a clear and structured approach intended to guide ethical deliberation…

The NCCHPP produced a Scan of Mental Health Strategies to show what is being developed in the field of population mental health across Canada. This Scan provides an overview of mental health and wellness and related strategies through comparative tables and summaries, with a particular emphasis on work related to the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental illnesses.

The NCCHPP produced a Scan of Mental Health Strategies1 to show what is being developed in the field of population mental health across Canada. This scan provides an overview of mental health and wellness and related strategies through comparative tables and summaries, with a particular emphasis on work related to the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental illnesses.

The NCCHPP produced a Scan of Mental Health Strategies1 to show what is being developed in the field of population mental health across Canada. This Scan provides an overview of mental health and wellness and related strategies through comparative tables and summaries, with a particular emphasis on work related to the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental illnesses.

The policy brief is a knowledge transfer tool that has increasingly been used in recent years as a way to inform or influence public policy decisions. Because policy briefs are designated by a variety of terms (e.g.: policy note, research snapshot, etc.) and prepared in various formats, it can be difficult to determine how to go about writing one. What exactly is it? What criteria should be…

What is an effective way to share public health knowledge with the municipal sector? In this document, we present the views expressed by civil servants in Canadian municipalities.

When public health actors wish to share knowledge in order to influence municipal policies that have an impact on health, they may wonder how to do this. Here are several questions that they might ask:

This document is part of a series of documents, webinars, and workshops on wicked problems developed by the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP). It is meant to highlight key factors and resources for dealing with wicked problems and to offer readers some practical examples for how these may be addressed. Our hope is that it will be useful to public health actors by…

This briefing note, by Paul Cairney of the University of Stirling, presents the importance of distinguishing between uncertainty and ambiguity in the strategies aimed to develop evidence-informed policy making.

Policy studies often distinguish between uncertainty, defined as a lack of knowledge about a policy problem or its solution, and ambiguity, defined as the potential to produce…

The purpose of this document is to equip public health actors to conduct a critical and nuanced ethical analysis of public health policies or population-based interventions accused or suspected of being paternalistic.

To deepen understanding of paternalism and help public health actors conduct this type of ethical analysis, this document has been structured around five main questions…