Webinars

This webinar took place in French.

The National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health (NCCDH) and Health Promotion Canada (HPC) are collaborating on a series of webinars to highlight several chapters of the newly released book Health Promotion in Canada 4th edition: New Perspectives on Theory, Practice, Policy, and Research. The goal is to explore how various themes in this book apply to public health action on health equity by pairing the authors’ content with practitioner perspective on application to public health practice.

The ecological approach to health promotion offers a research and action framework that emphasizes the complex interactions between people and their environment. Ecological health promotion interventions and programs “integrate people-focused efforts to modify health behaviours with interventions that will enhance the numerous dimensions of the environment: physical, social, cultural” (Health Promotion in Canada, 2017, p. 85).

While intrapersonal factors still remain key targets for action, the focus is on changing the environments which determine the choices that people can make that shape their health.

Unpacking the ecological approach to health promotion

This webinar explores the ecological approach to health promotion as a strategy to reorient public health programs and services and to impact population health inequities. Facilitators and challenges to the implementation of an ecological approach are discussed, including practice-based considerations at the individual, group, organization and community levels of implementation.

The recording highlights relevant research, position papers and other resources, including program examples that integrate an ecological approach to addressing population health. Considerations for how an ecological approach to health promotion programs can influence and are influenced by the social determinants of health are also explored.

Listeners will learn about

• concepts of ecological health promotion;
• facilitators and challenges to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of ecological health promotion interventions;
• practice-based scenarios demonstrating implementation of an ecological approach; and
• how social determinants intersect with ecological determinants to influence health equity.

Speakers

Pemma Muzumdar, Knowledge Translation Specialist, NCCDH	Josée Lapalme,  PhD candidate, Département de médecine sociale et préventive, École de santé publique de l’Université de Montréal; Quebec representative, Health Promotion Canada
Lucie Richard,  Professor, Faculté des sciences infirmières, University of Montreal; Researcher, IRSPUM	Lise Gauvin, Associate Dean of Research, École de santé publique de l’Université de Montréal
Anne Pelletier,  Planning, Programming and Research Agent, Direction régionale de santé publique du CIUSSS du Centre-Sud de Montréal

Related resources

Health Promotion in Canada, 4th edition (2017)	Webinar: Climate change, public health and equity (2019)
Advocacy for health equity: Environmental racism (2017)	Health inequalities and the social determinants of Aboriginal peoples' health (2013)
The Canadian Public Health Association’s Ecological Determinants Group on Education (EDGE)

Other related webinars in this series include:

• Contrasting entry points for intervention in health promotion practice (Chapter 6) (English and French)
• Promising practices in Indigenous community health promotion (Chapter 10)
• Health-in-all policies as a health promotion strategy (Chapter 18)
• Participatory practice and health promotion in Canada (Chapter 21)