What is the Population Health Approach?

Linked Documents :

A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians: the 1974 report on health promotion that led to an evolution in thinking about health.

Achieving Health For All: A Framework For Health Promotion : Released in 1986, this paper proposed an approach called "health promotion", an integration of ideas from several arenas of public health, health education and public policy. It represented an expansion of the traditional use of the term "health promotion".

Roundtable on Population Health and Health Promotion: This report presents the substance of the 1996 Roundtable dialogue, summarizing the key elements of discussions, noting areas of agreement and disagreement, and highlighting recommendations for follow-up developed by the participants.

National Forum on Health : The Forum officially ended its operations in 1997. As part of its mission to maintain and improve the nation's health, it commissioned studies to provide a review of health and health care in Canada, including examples of effective action and experiences of Canadians with particular urgency for today.

Strategies for Population Health: Investing in the Health of Canadians: This paper was prepared by the Federal, Provincial and Territorial Advisory Committee on Population Health for the Meeting of the Ministers of Health, 1994. It provides an excellent summary of what we know about the broad determinants of health.

Towards a Common Understanding: Clarifying the Core Concepts of Pop Health: The purpose of this 1996 paper is to promote a common understanding of population health and to describe how a population health approach will guide future program and policy development within Health Canada.

Taking Action On Population Health: This paper was prepared by the Health Promotion and Programs Branch (now the Population and Public Health Branch) in 1999 to provide employees with a better understanding of what a population health approach means to their work, and to offer a review of its evolution and links to health promotion.

Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations: Social, Biological, and Educational Dynamics , Canadian Institute of Advanced Research, Daniel Keating and Clyde Hertzman, editors, 1999, outlines a conceptual framework for the understanding of human development in the modern world, presents detailed discussions of the key evidence and offers a framework for discussion in which the fundamental importance of human development is recognized and included in societal decisions.

Integrated Model of Population Health and Health Promotion: This 1996 paper was prepared by the Health Promotion and Programs Branch (now the Population and Public Health Branch) to examine how population health and health promotion are related.

Recommended Reading:

Why Are Some People Healthy and Others Not? by the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research (1994)

• highlights observations that have heretofore been difficult to explain within traditional clinical or health-promotion understandings of what makes some populations healthier than others.

Population Health in Canada: A Systematic Review by Michael V. Hayes and James R. Dunn (Canadian Policy Research Network Study No. H01, 1998)

• traces the development of population health through major source documents, critiques, policy documents, and technical papers that espouse or engage the ideas of population health.

Related Sites:

Policy Research Initiative HORIZONS Newsletter: Population Health Edition