Grant: Operating Grant: Knowledge to Action

Attention to 'upstream' determinants of health is placing new demands on health researchers and practitioners to work together with new and unlikely allies, often well beyond the traditional health domain. The need for intersectoral action to improve the determinants of health in Canada is especially pronounced in northern, rural and remote communities where converging health impacts demand new levels of collaboration and integration to optimise limited resources. The project will aim to strengthen capacity for intersectoral action to improve water-related determinants of health in northern BC. Prior collaborative work with the Northern Regional Drinking Water Teams and planning the recent BC Water Symposium has identified a combined 'knowledge-push' and 'knowledge-pull' within the proposed project team, expressed by the overarching research question: What can be learned by working together to link knowledge of the health benefits of integrated watershed governance with the experience and practice of intersectoral action for health? Based on prior collaborations, common questions and the solid research partnership of Northern Health and the University of Northern British Columbia, the proposed project will match research strengths with identified needs of knowledge-users, in a collaborative, integrated knowledge translation process.