ARCHIVED - Integrated Strategy on Healthy Living and Chronic Diseases - Knowledge Development and Exchange Functional Component

Conclusions

4.0 Relevance

The published literature, key national public health reports and health commissions, as well as the external stakeholders and the internal PHAC key informants are clear in their agreement that KD&E activities are of central relevance to healthy living and chronic disease efforts in Canada.  In addition, both internal and external key informants state that the KD&E Functional Component addresses a real need and it is a need for which the federal government has a key role. There is currently no duplication of effort either within or across ISHLCD Functional Components or with external activities of P/Ts and other stakeholder groups. Areas with overlap in focus and nature of KD&E activities externally are viewed positively due to the scope of the public health issues and needs related to KD&E across Canada.

4.1 Success/Progress

The views of the PHAC key informants and of the external stakeholders are in agreement.  Some progress is being made toward the broad goals of the KD&E Functional Component, especially in the areas of knowledge development and needs assessment. There are challenges, however, with respect to the clarity of goals, recruitment of personnel, and a lack of coordination internally and with external resources and organizations. The one area of knowledge development that was identified as a significant knowledge gap and area of little activity is in intervention research. Activities supporting knowledge exchange and capacity building, and learning from practice are under-developed and under-resourced to date.

4.2 Design and Delivery

There is a lack of clarity in the KD&E program design and many of the persons delivering this evolving program lack the KD&E background to enable them to work well towards the tasks presented to them.  This does not deny the presence of a few well-prepared and dedicated staff members but they are not sufficient to accomplish the broad range of tasks required of a KD&E Functional Component within ISHLCD.  The external stakeholders made the point that the program lacks funding appropriate to its mandate. They observed that consultative, coordinating and planning mechanisms within PHAC could be improved. Some also felt that PHAC does not coordinate adequately with others working on the same issues across Canada.

There is insufficient evidence to show that PHAC delivers fully on its planned outputs due in part to the challenges of a monitoring/tracking system and lack of initiative-specific formal evaluation activities. Further, it is unclear if the implementation and data collection processes are sufficiently developed to expect substantive and intermediate outcomes will be achieved.  Where there is agreement on progress towards intended outcomes, they are toward outcomes that are process focused (improved awareness and climate for KD&E; increased sharing of information and knowledge with and between external organizations; identification of assets and gaps in knowledge and capacity).  The kinds of outcomes that could be foundational for long term outcomes (enhanced external KD&E planning, coordination and implementation and increased use and adoption of evidence and tools from evidence inventories) is where there is agreement that less progress has been made to date.