Best practices is a hot topic in a number of fields, ranging from education to
medicine. Recently, discussions concerning the meaning and implications of best
practices have begun in health promotion circles. This article focuses on the
exploration of best practices in health promotion by the Best Practices Work Group,
Centre for Health Promotion, University of Toronto. Funding for this exploration
was provided by Health Canada, Ontario Region, as part of the Centre's larger
project concerned with the effectiveness of health promotion.
The story of best practices and the Centre for Health Promotion starts in June
1996, when an International Symposium on the Effectiveness of Health Promotion
was held to mark the designation of the Centre as a World Health Organization
Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion. As a result of this symposium, two
work groups were established, one dealing with consolidating the evidence
regarding the effectiveness of health promotion, and the other concerned with the
evaluation of health promotion and best practices in health promotion.
At the second meeting of the Evaluation/Best Practices Work Group, members
decided to focus one work group exclusively on evaluation of health promotion, and
to form a third work group which would concentrate on Continuous Quality
Improvement (CQI) and health promotion. At that time it was felt that CQI
expressed the Centre's interests better than did best practices. After a six month
study and clarification process, however, the CQI Work Group still felt some
discomfort around the application of CQI to health promotion, in part because of
CQI's manufacturing and business origins. At this point, in October 1997, a
background paper and a workshop examining the ins and outs of best practices
seemed to melt initial reservations concerning the best practices topic and the CQI
Work Group evolved into the enthusiastic and committed Best Practices Work
Group. The core membership of this group numbers approximately 10 people and
includes front-line health promotion practitioners, evaluators, university faculty,
and provincial and federal government representatives.