Linking to and addressing the determinants of health: a review of the Innovation Strategy experience.

Abstract

This review focuses on the work of the Equipping Canadians: Mental Health throughout Life and Achieving Healthier Weights in Canada's Communities projects funded under the Public Health Agency of Canada Innovation Strategy (PHAC-IS) during the latter half of phase 2 (2013/14). The PHAC-IS was a national strategic grantmaking program that funded the testing and delivery of evidence-based population health interventions between 2009 and 2020. A key objective of the PHAC-IS was to support work to address underlying determinants of health for priority public health problems. Overall, PHAC-IS funded projects most frequently linked to culture, social environment, and personal health practices and coping skills when phase 2 performance reports were reviewed against identified determinants of health. While the same pattern of prominent linkages was seen in the mental health funding stream, projects funded under the healthy weights stream differed slightly, most frequently linking to the social environment, followed by personal health practices and coping skills, as well as the physical environment. Population health programming funded by the PHAC-IS has reported cursory links with the determinants of health. This corresponds with the PHAC-IS program's original intent to address these determinants that crosscut jurisdictions, sectors, and ecological levels, and underscores the need for more sustained capture of work around health equity and the determinants of health at the systems level.