Health Canada
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Your Community
This page is designed to help people like you - who want to make a difference - work with your municipal government partners to make your communities healthier and smokefree. Here we offer information, practical tools and resources to help you along the way.
Tobacco control is everyone's business. From individual to global action, success will be achieved by combining our efforts. Health Canada knows that working with the provinces, territories and NGOs, as well as the international health community, is vital to effective tobacco control.
On this page :
Better Practices
Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in Canada. To change this, we must rely on the identification, implementation, and evaluation of high impact, cost-efficient solutions. To support decision-making regarding strategy and interventions, a systematic approach is needed.
The model for better practices is based on the work of the Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative (CTCRI) in collaboration with many individuals and organizations. With support across Canada and in the United States, CTCRI has developed a model for identifying solutions to complex health problems.
The model describes better practices as plausible, appropriate, evidence-based and well-executed actions associated with processes likely to have the greatest impact on reducing current and future burdens of disease. The process builds on current knowledge and experience to take the right action in the present and create a better future.
The main parts of the model need collaboration between research and practice. They are grouped into three parts: (1) building on existing knowledge from work done in the past; (2) taking reasonable action in the present; and (3) contributing to the wisdom of the future.
This model is useful to many stakeholders, but it is most likely to be used by decision-makers to review material for the purpose of identifying (A) interventions, (B) research questions, and (C) resources. It is also applicable to a variety of health problems not limited to those associated with tobacco use. The model should improve the health interventions to which it is applied.
The highly interactive and self-improving nature of this model has led to the conclusion that this is not about determining the "best" practices. In fact, this model serves to continuously try to do better -- better because of the knowledge that is gathered and for being attentive to the unique needs of people and the ways to help them.
