Supporting the diffusion of healthy public policy in Canada: the Prevention Policies Directory

Healthy public policy plays an essential role in a comprehensive public healthapproach to preventing cancer and chronic disease. Public policies spreadthrough the ‘policy diffusion’ process, enabling governments tolearn from another’s enacted policy solutions. The Prevention PoliciesDirectory (the Directory), an online database of municipal,provincial/territorial, and federal cancer and chronic disease preventionpolicies from across Canada, was developed to facilitate the diffusion ofhealthy public policies and support the work of prevention researchers,practitioners, and policy specialists. This information technology solution was implemented, through a participatory engagement approach, as a communication channel or policy knowledge transfer tool. It also addressed theintrinsic shortcomings of environmental scanning for policy surveillance andmonitoring. A combination of quantitative web metrics and qualitative anecdotalevidence have illustrated that the Directory is becoming an important tool forhealthy public policy surveillance and policy diffusion in Canada.