The first of the NCCHPP’s three main content areas is healthy public policy and what is known about the potential health impact of specific public policies, in particular those relevant to Canadians.
This means synthesizing studies of health risks and other impacts of the determinants of health.
Our focus is healthy public policy, that is, public policy that potentially enhances populations’ health by having a positive impact on the social, economic and environmental determinants of health. This approach is based on the understanding developed through research over recent decades that health is influenced by many factors, such as education, social support, income, and the physical environment. We see public policies as tools to influence these determinants. Examples include policies about transportation, housing, food distribution, fiscal measures, education strategies, and so on.
Although health services are a determinant of health, we explicitly exclude policies in this sector, such as waiting lists, for example. These important policies are addressed by others.
The focus of the NCCHPP is public policies outside the health services sector. Public policies are choices made by a governing authority (provincial, regional or municipal) to manage a problem of public interest. These policies are generally represented by measures or instruments. The NCCHPP is particularly interested by the processes influencing these choices: how problems emerge in the public conscience, how they are put on the public agenda and how the solutions for these problems are elaborated. Although a centre focused on healthy public policy is an innovative initiative in Canada, the idea of healthy public policy is not a new one. For example, it is one of the five action areas in the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion of 1986.
Guest Commentary Trevor Hancock : 
"Healthy Public Policy", 20 years later. Where are we ?
Trevor Hancock is a renowned public health actor and theorist. He has been a key player in developing ideas and strategies on healthy public policy in Canada. He was instrumental in framing the 1986 Ottawa Health Charter and he wrote a related seminal article called Beyond Health Care: From Public Health Policy to Healthy Public Policy, published in the Canadian Public Health Journal in 1986. Read the interview