Achieving population health goals: perspectives on measurement and implementation from Australia

Health goals and targets have been widely used to indicate strategic direction and priority for health improvement on a population basis. This paper provides an overview of Australia's experience in using health targets and considers the relevance of this experience for Canada. It gives special attention to the challenge of developing a broadly based set of targets that reflect the social, economic and environmental determinants of health alongside more traditional measures of health status. It examines how the technical challenge of measurement, the bureaucratic barriers between government departments, and the political conservatism inherent in federal systems of government present formidable barriers to effective action on comprehensive national health targets. The paper concludes with a reminder of the need for inter-sectorial action to address the determinants of health. Based on the Australian experience, it suggests for Canada an ideal combination of a national population health framework to guide direction and priority, to be implemented through action at a more local level, through well-defined partnerships.