1.1 Background And Rationale

A key orientation of the Population and Public Health (formerly the Health Promotion and Programs) Branch of Health Canada since the mid 1990s, the population health approach directs interventions aimed at improving health toward broad, systemic determinants, many of which lie outside the traditional health care system. It is characterized by:

• strategies that include policies, programs and services that respond to evidence about the relative effects of multiple determinants of health

• actions and outcomes that have an impact on populations and sub-populations, and therefore address societal, community, structural or system-level changes

• collaboration among multiple sectors, given that influence over most of the determinants of health lies outside of the health sector.

The Regional Directors of the Health Promotion and Programs Branch assumed the role of champions of the population health approach, on the basis of a regional mobilization strategy articulated in 1998. A gradual integration of the approach into all regional programs and activities was foreseen, following an initial implementation period during which a portion of regional resources was set aside for specific mobilization activities.

The regional mobilization strategy includes five key approaches, three of which require a focus external to Health Canada: broaden work on health determinants, focus on populations and collaborate across sectors. The remaining two strategies are more internally focussed: develop knowledge and document the experience of population health. The priorities adopted for the regional mobilization of population health are:

• increasing the focus on the broader determinants of health such as income and social status, employment, social environment and health services

• giving priority to initiatives that involve a range of sectors in developing health public policy

• generating a variety of evidence which can inform the processes and strategies for influencing healthy public policy and support the development of future programs and initiatives.

In support of these priorities, it was decided to showcase specific regional initiatives in a series of case studies, as a way of demonstrating how to mobilize people and institutions to use the population health approach and to demonstrate early results of its use. Although there is a multiplicity of effort in the regions to mobilize the use of the approach, it was decided to choose just one initiative from each region on which to focus attention, largely because of the additional anticipated effort required to monitor, analyze, evaluate and report on these initiatives. Based on the priorities, each region identified a specific population health mobilization initiative to be the subject of the case study. They fall into one or more of the following categories:

• initiatives that were developed to address a particular health issue or set of health issues

• initiatives organized around innovative partnerships and decision-making models

• initiatives that focus on creating an environment conducive to a population health approach.

The objectives of the case studies of regional mobilization are:

• to document what the regions have learned and accomplished in mobilizing a population health approach

• to use the knowledge gained through the mobilization strategy to inform the theory and practice of population health internally and externally.

This report presents the findings from all six case studies, as well as a cross-case analysis, focussing on lessons learned in the regional mobilization of population health which can be used to inform the practice of Branch program staff working in the field and in the marketing of the population health approach to key decision makers in wellness policy and planning initiatives.

Previous Page | Table of Contents | Next Page