Background:

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) came into being on September 24, 2004. Canada's first Chief Public Health Officer was appointed at the same time. The major components of the PHAC came from the former Population and Public Health Branch of Health Canada. PHAC's mission and organizational structure will be briefly illustrated. The Office of Public Health Practice has the lead for the development and implementation of the Agency's Knowledge Transfer (KT) strategy.

Objective:

The goal is to describe the proposed KT strategy for the PHAC. The Agency is dedicated to the idea of evidence-based decision-making. How, then does Cochrane evidence get factored into the policy-making process? The purpose of the strategy will be to translate this thinking into practice. The strategy has an internal component which emphasises KT within the Agency and between its different centres and offices. There is also an external component which addresses relationships with external stakeholders such as the six national collaborating centres, and public health practice settings.
One mechanism for KT is training. The Canadian field epidemiology program, the skills enhancement for health surveillance program, and the Public Health Scholarship and fellowship training program will be described. These are all part of the Office of Public Health Practice.

Method:

The draft strategy was developed by consulting the KT literature, internal PHAC stakeholders, key external organizations who have expertise in this area, like the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, and speaking with professionals in public health practice at federal, provincial and regional levels.

Results:

It is premature for a draft strategy to demonstrate any results. However the intent is to demonstrate that 1) the PHAC is better positioned to make policy decisions based on the best available evidence (Cochrane and others), and 2) this evidence also informs public health practice.

Conclusion:

The PHAC has a huge challenge developing and implementing the strategy. Feedback from participants at the concurrent session would be appreciated.