Imagine the world in 2048. What do you see? I imagine a world in which a greater proportion of humanity gets to partake in the beauty and bounty the world has to offer while being buffered from more of its downsides. It brings to mind what Arundhati Roy imagines as “another world.” In this “another world” described by Roy, three things will be central to health promotion practice.
The National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health (NCCDH) is launching a 20-month participatory initiative to test ways to develop organizational capacity to advance health equity. To learn more, please contact nccdh@stfx.ca.
Back in early February, four NCCs came together to host an NCC Knowledge Exchange Forum Towards TB Elimination in Northern and Indigenous Communities.
On November 15, 2017, the International Union for Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) opened a Secretariat office on Montreal, Quebec, further emphasizing Canada’s significance as a player on the global health promotion stage.
Tuberculosis (TB) is impacted by many social determinants of health, which leads to inequities in who is affected by the disease and how it manifests in the population. A shift in public health approach that addresses health equity as the primary focus could contribute to the elimination of TB, in addition to addressing other health inequities across the population.
The NCCDH recently participated in the first full gathering of the Multisectoral Urban Systems for Health and Equity in Canadian Cities (MUSE) project, a Canada-wide initiative to analyze how local municipalities, public health and community organizations work together to design our cities to promote fair distribution of health outcomes.
When I attended the Public Health 2017 conference this past summer in Halifax, NS, (in Mi’kmaki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People), there were multiple resources from the First Nations Health Directors Association (FNHDA) of British Columbia that I found very interesting. One of the other resources the FNHDA shared also caught my attention: the Social Determinants of Health Discussion Guide, created by the First Nations Health Council (FNHC) in BC.
The NCCDH worked in partnership to co-host a national CPHA pre-conference session on June 5th, 2017 in Halifax, NS entitled “Public health leadership and capacity: do tools catalyze action?”
In 2016, the NCCDH completed audience and partner surveys, designed with our external evaluator, to help us understand our intended audiences’ and partners’ engagement with the NCCDH. The surveys sought to gage perceptions of quality, relevance, credibility and expertise; influence on capacity; and contributions to organizational changes.
Advocacy is both an important strategy and practice within public health. These NCCDH resources highlight how advocacy can contribute to addressing the social determinants of health and improving health equity.
