October 2005

Information

Integrated Strategy on Healthy Living and Chronic Disease

Integrated Chronic Disease Prevention and Enhanced Surveillance

An Integrated Approach To Preventing Chronic Disease

The Integrated Strategy on Healthy Living and Chronic Disease brings innovative and integrated approaches to health promotion and chronic disease prevention. It will help to advance changes in society that will create and support environments for healthy living and chronic disease prevention. The evidence shows that these changes will be most effectively accomplished by working across sectors and across public health disciplines. Public health efforts - to improve health, to keep high-risk people from contracting disease, and to help people who have chronic disease - can and must be integrated and better coordinated. Specific initiatives to support integrated chronic disease prevention are outlined below.

Demonstration Projects for Integrated Chronic Disease Prevention ($18.4 million over five years, and $4.35 million per year ongoing)

Demonstration projects can be thought of as real-life experiments in implementing integrated prevention activities. The Integrated Strategy will support projects to adapt and test international best practices in a Canadian setting - either regionally or nationally - as well as to develop and to test innovative Canadian approaches to integrated prevention efforts. These projects will include integrated prevention initiatives conducted by different provinces that address common questions and share a common evaluation protocol to determine Awhat works" (adapted from models used by the World Health Organization). The demonstration projects program is centered on knowledge development, exchange and dissemination. Demonstration projects will enhance our understanding of best methods for the implementation of health promotion and chronic disease prevention and control programs.

Observatory of Best Practices ($6.5 million over five years, and $2.0 million per year ongoing)

A national consortium of governments and stakeholders will be formed to identify "what works." The consortium will inventory health promotion and disease prevention interventions; identify and develop best practices; disseminate this information to researchers, policy makers and practitioners; and monitor the adoption of best practices. The Observatory will provide a critical mechanism for ensuring that evidence gathered from all of the various components of the Integrated Strategy is identified and shared. Best practice interventions in support of chronic disease prevention will range over the entire spectrum of health interventions - including clinical care, community interventions, partnership- and coalition-building and public policies.

Evaluation, Monitoring and Coordination ($4.75 million over five years, and $1.05 million per year ongoing)

The monitoring and evaluation plan for the Integrated Strategy balances the need for key information in the early years of the Strategy with longer-term decision-making needs. Reports on the progress of integrated action on chronic disease will track how Canada is doing over time and in comparison to other countries. It will also support internal coordination and activities for the Public Health Network that relate to chronic diseases.

International Collaboration ($4.9 million over five years, and $1.1 million per year ongoing)

The goal is international collaboration to utilize and extend the Public Health Agency of Canada's (PHAC) expertise in chronic disease policy development and analysis through the work of its WHO Collaborating Centre on Non-Communicable Disease Policy, and through its link to a network of global experts and resource persons. PHAC is mandated to promote and protect public health in Canada and to collaborate in international efforts. This dimension of the Integrated Strategy will support PHAC's mandate to represent the Government of Canada in international public health forums on health promotion and chronic disease. There will be specific international work undertaken on nutrition and healthy eating that is intended to strengthen international partnerships and collaboration to share and exchange expertise to advance Canadian agendas in policy, research and implementation to improve the nutritional health of Canadians.

Integrated Approach To Surveillance

Enhanced Surveillance for Chronic Disease ($36.5 million over five years, and $10.5 million per year ongoing)

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) monitors, researches, investigates and carries out surveillance and reports on diseases, injuries, other preventable health risks and their determinants, as well as the general state of public health in Canada and internationally. Surveillance is a key knowledge and management tool for decision-makers - for understanding the population's health and for measuring progress in changing health outcomes. Enhanced surveillance will build the foundation of a comprehensive approach to chronic disease surveillance that will improve our ability to monitor: risk conditions in society; disease risk factors; the existence of pre-disease states and disease; and treatments and their outcomes. It will add to, and bring together, results from existing surveillance efforts in the areas of cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, in which the National Diabetes Surveillance System is a key element.