Grant: Health System Impact Fellowships - PostDoc Central Canada 2 year

The mission of Public Health Ontario (PHO), the host organization, is to enable informed decisions and actions that protect and promote health and contribute to reducing health inequities. This includes the expectation for public health units (PHUs) to promote the creation of healthy built environments (HBE) through the establishment of key partnerships and healthy public policy. The intent of achieving HBE is to support greater physical activity, healthy eating, reduce injuries, promote social cohesion and reduce health inequities. The objectives of the proposed program of work are to determine (1) (what is) the level of change readiness of public health units towards planning and implementation of effective policy and planning actions on the HBE; and (2) what are the corresponding barriers and facilitiators that influence change readiness of PHUs towards policy and planning changes to the HBE? To achieve these objectives, a situational assessment on current HBE actions will be conducted to (a) evaluate change readiness of PHUs for acting on HBEs, (b) identify needs and priorities for improving the HBE, and (c) determine how best can PHO support PHUs efforts to identify and implement policy and planning actions related to HBEs. Additionally, the fellow will work towards advancing established partnerships and cultivating new collaborations between PHO and other key stakeholders. While the Health Promotion, Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention staff at PHO have been involved in a number of HBE-related research projects, there has not been an opportunity to date to conduct a situational assessment to evaluate and prioritize capacity building needs of public health units on a system-wide basis.