Program and public policy

This document is intended for public health actors who, given their role as health promoters, are interested in how public policy can act as a lever for action that affects population health and its determinants. More specifically, this document seeks to meet the needs of public health actors acting as expert advisors to decision makers during the promotion, adoption, and implementation of public policies. Fulfilling this role requires them to synthesize knowledge about how effective public…

Public policies affect population health. Public health actors are called upon to document this phenomenon, in particular, by producing knowledge syntheses. To meet the needs of decision makers, a knowledge synthesis must consider not only the effects and the equity of the public policy being studied, but also the issues surrounding its implementation (cost, feasibility, acceptability).

Drawing inspiration from political science, from literature on evidence-informed decision making…

We gathered data from the scientific and grey literature and from Canadian actors involved in addressing obesity to document the effectiveness of nutrition-labelling policies, as well as their unintended effects, equity, cost, feasibility, and acceptability. Presented here is a broad outline of the results.

The nutrition-labelling policies studied target pre-packaged foods or restaurant menus, and require them to display nutrition information either in a detailed format (Nutrition…

This document is a summary version of the report, Public Policies on Nutrition Labelling: Effects and Implementation Issues – A Knowledge Synthesis, produced by the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP). For readers who would like to learn more about the knowledge synthesis method used as well as the knowledge gathered and the full bibliographic references, we invite you to consult the full report.

Nutrition labelling on pre-packaged foods and on…

Today, the links between poverty and health are well-established (Phipps, 2003) and the resulting inequalities in health have proven to be persistent (Whitehead & Dahlgren, 2007). Indeed, the population groups with the worst health status are materially underprivileged and socially excluded (De Koninck et al., 2008), leading many analysts to single out poverty as one of the primary determinants of health.

In 2002, the Government of Québec adopted An Act to Combat Poverty and…

Today, the links between poverty and health are well-established (Phipps, 2003) and the resulting inequalities in health have proven to be persistent (Whitehead & Dahlgren, 2007). Indeed, the population groups with the worst health status are materially underprivileged and socially excluded (De Koninck et al., 2008), leading many analysts to single out poverty as one of the primary determinants of health.

In 2002, the Government of Québec passed An Act to Combat Poverty and…

Public policies of various governmental sectors can influence, directly or indirectly, the health of the population. Whether they be policies related to transportation, environment, income, education, child-care, or social housing, these can all impact the determinants of health. As a consequence, decision makers are increasingly being called to adopt healthy public policies; that is, policies which have integrated a preoccupation with population health.

However, adopting healthy…

Public health actors are increasingly being called upon to base their decisions on the best available knowledge. Various knowledge translation strategies have therefore been proposed as a means of drawing together the world of research with that of decision making (Mitton et al., 2007).

Yet, knowledge translation still faces many challenges: research is not always valued as an input in the decision-making process; research is not always relevant to the issues faced by public…

Deliberative processes such as citizens’ juries, consensus conferences, or deliberative polls are increasingly used to engage citizens and stakeholders about challenging public health issues for the purposes of informing policymaking (Abelson, 2009; Scutchfield, Hall, & Ireson, 2006). Yet, there is a paucity of research evidence about the effectiveness of deliberative processes in real settings (Culyer & Lomas, 2006; Mendelberg, 2002).

The purpose of this fact sheet is to…

Alcohol consumption is a public health issue because it causes many health and social harms: