Evidence-Informed Public Health

Evidence-informed public health is “the process of distilling and disseminating the best available evidence from research, practice, and experience and using that evidence to inform and improve public health policy and practice.  Put simply, it means finding, using and sharing what works in public health.” ¹

There are many published resources detailing the implementation of an evidence-informed approach to public health practice.  The National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools at McMaster University provides a Model for Evidence-Informed Decision Making in Public Health that is widely accepted by public health professionals.

The model outlines an evidence-based approach in seven steps:

1. Define the problem and formulate a good question in response to the information need
2. Search the literature for the best available evidence
3. Critically appraise the relevant literature found
4. Synthesize and interpret the evidence to create recommendations that address the question
5. Adapt the evidence and recommendations to the local context based on community needs, political will, economic/ staff resources, and professional/community preferences
6. Implement the adapted evidence and recommendations
7. Evaluate the effects of the decisions and actions taken. ²

Databases

• Canadian Best Practices Portal
  Created and managed by the Public Health Agency of Canada, this portal contains a searchable database of community interventions which have been evaluated and shown to be successful as well as lists of evidence-informed sites and resources.
• Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care
  A chronological list of clinical practice guidelines established by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
• Guide to Community Preventive Services
  A topical guide of best practices to improve health and prevent disease, maintained by the Community Preventive Services Task Force of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 
• Health Evidence
  Health Evidence provides a searchable database of current reviews of the research literature.  These reviews are critically appraised and rated for their quality.
• National Guideline Clearinghouse
  The National Guideline Clearinghouse is a database of clinical guidelines collected and managed by the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.  Each guideline is broken into sections for easier reading.  There are also syntheses of guidelines and a tool to compare guidelines.
• Registered Nurses Association of Ontario Best Practice Guidelines
  A searchable database of best practice guidelines for nurses.
• TRIP Database
  The TRIP Database is a searchable database of research evidence compiled from bibliographic databases as well as from reputable websites and other information sources.  The results can be limited to different levels of pre-processed evidence, for example, only systematic reviews or only guidelines.
• U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
  The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a panel of experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine who conduct reviews of preventive health care services. 
• The Virtual Library
  The Virtual Library provides access to 18 bibliographic databases including Medline, CINAHL with Full Text, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects.  Public health librarians have additional access to other important databases that can also be searched on your behalf to locate primary studies.

Directories

• Evidence-based Public Health
  A health wiki created by the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, providing general resources and an alphabetical listing of evidence-based producers of information.
• Information Sources for Evidence-Based Public Health (PDF, 76 KB)
  The Ontario Public Health Libraries Association lists a number of Canadian, U.S., and international evidence-based information sources.