Public health priorities
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Strategic priorities
The Pan-Canadian Public Health Network (PHN) is currently focusing its efforts on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Outside of this emergency period, the PHN's 5-year strategic priorities:
- are foundational to the PHN's collaborative work
- support its goals to promote and protect the health of Canadians and improve health outcomes
The 2018-2022 strategic priorities were identified by the PHN as public health priorities that would benefit from coordinated public health action at a pan-Canadian level. The strategic priorities are used by the PHN and public health partners to:
- drive technical work
- support sharing and adaptation of best practices and public health learning
- enable effective policies, programs and practices to be implemented to promote and protect the health of Canadians
There are 8 strategic priorities identified for 2018-2022 led by the steering committees of the PHN. Indigenous health and environmental health are horizontal priorities, which are applied as important considerations across all work of the PHN.
Public Health Network strategic priorities (2018 to 2022)
Text description
Strategic priorities of the Healthy People and Communities Steering Committee:
- reducing health inequalities
- healthy living
Strategic priorities of the Communicable and Infectious Disease Steering Committee:
- sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections
- immunization and vaccine preventable diseases
- zoonotic diseases (Lyme disease and other vector-borne disease)
Strategic priorities of the Public Health Infrastructure Steering Committee:
- implementation of the Blueprint for a Federated System for Public Health Surveillance
- public health emergency preparedness and management
- public health workforce
Horizontal priorities are applied as considerations across all work of the PHN:
- Indigenous health
- environmental health
Other key areas of interest
In addition to its 5-year strategic priorities, the PHN also focuses efforts on:
- limiting the emergence and spread of drug resistance pathogens
- urgent issues related to overdoses and deaths linked to the use of opioids and other substances
- standards on sharing, usage, disclosure and protection of public health information among jurisdictions for:
- infectious diseases
- public health emergencies of international concern
- advancing Canada's national dementia strategy
For more information about the work of the PHN, refer to our reports and publications.
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