It is not just in public health or in government sectors that people are talking about working multisectorally. It is a general phenomenon, but in terms of creating healthy public policy in complex environments, it is becoming ever clearer that learning how to work effectively across public health and government sectors is essential.

In this paper, published in December 2008, François Gagnon and Denise Kouri examine how two provincial governments have created integrated governance initiatives in order to better coordinate public policies and ultimately improve health outcomes.

This paper addresses section 54 of Québec’s Public Health Act and British Columbia’s ActNow as two strategies that are relatively well-known in Canada and which can serve as reference points for discussion and reflection about the contexts of integrated governance approaches, the conceptual frameworks by which they are informed, and their implementation strategies. This document is not an evaluation or a ranking of the respective strategies; it is clear that they are quite different. However, the approaches are used as a point of departure for analysis and clear thinking about working across sectors in practical terms.

Integrated Governance and Healthy Public Policy: Two Canadian Examples
43 pages