Supporting knowledge into action: The Canadian Best Practices Initiative for Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention

Public health practitioners and policy-makers working to address the burden of chronic disease are increasingly seeking to use best practices given the need to make thoughtful program and policy choices with limited resources. While the evidence base in chronic disease prevention is growing through a number of different information sources, there is often a disconnect between the desire to use best practices and their implementation. This is related not only to individual and organizational barriers in terms of time and resources, but also to lack of agreement on what constitutes best practice and what sources of evidence are valid guides for practice. This is compounded by lack of user-friendly and streamlined access to credible best practice evidence and decision making/practice supports. In response to these needs, six years ago Canadian researchers, policy-makers and practitioners came together to begin working on creating a best practice system in Canada for health promotion and chronic disease prevention. This article presents an overview of the development of the Canadian Best Practices Portal and in particular how an evolution in thinking about best practice methodology and evidence will contribute to an enriched knowledge base for health promotion and chronic disease prevention policy, practice and research.