Moving Forward from the COVID-19 Pandemic: 10 Opportunities for Strengthening Canada’s Public Health Systems
Section 1: What did we do, and why?

Section 1: What did we do, and why?

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented attention to public health. It exposed longstanding stresses on the system while also demonstrating the sector’s remarkable capacity to act when resources are devoted to it. As the public health community takes stock of the COVID-19 crisis and looks ahead to other ongoing and emerging threats, it has a critical opportunity to articulate the need for increased investment and fundamental rebuilding in this sector. With a keen interest in this area and relationships spanning public health academia, research, funding, policy, and practice, the CIHR Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) was well-placed to convene a broad national dialogue with the public health community to identify unified priorities and accompanying strategies for public health systems that are prepared to address current and future challenges.

Between April and June 2021, IPPH led an engagement process that convened researchers, policymakers, practitioners, members of community organizations, and other key stakeholders in a series of dialogues. These virtual sessions included seven open-invitation events on focused topics that were hosted by collaborating partners, two discussions with key stakeholder groups, and three invitation-only sessions. The dialogues were designed to elicit insights, ideas, and actionable solutions on a range of issues facing public health. An initial background paper helped to orient the conversations, and several sessions were organized around guiding questions. At each event, participants had the opportunity to contribute to open discussions and to share additional comments and resources in text through the chat function. Written submissions were also accepted by email. Participants had the option to contribute to the dialogues in English or French.

The dialogue sessions were attended by 214 unique participants (a total of 484 attendees overall when counting instances where participants attended multiple events). Participants included individuals working in government (32%), researchers (28%), students (15%), members of the NGO sector (6%), and members of other sectors (19%). Appendix 1 contains additional demographic information about the attendees. Appendix 2 links to the detailed meeting reports for the open-invitation events and a summary of additional topics discussed at the key stakeholder and invitation-only sessions.

Recognizing that many other public health actors and organizations are similarly grappling with the long-standing challenges facing and renewed attention on public health, IPPH worked closely with other public health organizations such as the Canadian Public Health Association, the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health, the Network of Schools and Programs of Population and Public Health, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), and the Urban Public Health Network. This coordinated approach sought to ensure that these dialogues would inform a range of different planning and decision-making processes by these and other public health actors without duplicating efforts. IPPH also benefitted from work of partners, most notably the concurrent work of the Chief Public Health Officer (CPHO) whom shared background information from the 2021 CPHO report and collaborated on a Best Brains Exchange to inform both organizations work. Many of our collaborating partners have already made use of these dialogues. IPPH will use these conversations to identify priorities for how we can collectively build future-proof public health systems and to inform our Institute’s refreshed Strategic Plan to be released in 2022.

This report highlights the key challenges, priorities for action, and 10 key opportunities that dialogue participants identified for Canada’s public health systems. Their insights signal that this is both a critical juncture and a time of unprecedented opportunity for public health in Canada. We hope that sharing what we heard will help to inform the systemic change that is necessary and possible at this unique moment.

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