About

Public health interventions are more likely to be effective when they address the social conditions in which people are born, live and age. Increasingly, public health initiatives in BC are intervening at this “upstream” level, targeting public policies, systems and structures that perpetuate health inequities.

Evaluating the impacts of these initiatives introduces unique challenges that cannot be addressed with traditional evaluation tools. Yet, policymakers and health practitioners need evidence to determine whether they are doing the right things — and whether they are doing them right.

We aim to address this challenge by facilitating a series of conversations between policymakers, researchers and health practitioners. Through a series of online consultations and an in-person Thought Exchange event, we are bringing together researchers who do upstream health promotion evaluation and public health research users who use evaluation evidence to guide decision-making.

Together we will investigate how upstream evaluation is currently being conducted in BC, where efforts can be coordinated to improve innovation and capacity and what are the research priorities “moving upstream” in the realm of health promotion evaluation.

Principal Investigator

• Dr. Kimberly Thomson, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

Funders

• Michael Smith Health Research BC
• Pacific Public Health Foundation

Project Partners

• BC Centre for Disease Control
• BC Health Authorities

Publications

• Gómez-Ramírez, O.*, Thomson, K. C.*, Fielden, S., & McKee, G. (2023, October). Lessons from evaluating the impact of upstream health promotion initiatives [Conference presentation]. Canadian Evaluation Society British Columbia Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada. *Denotes equal contributions
• Thomson, K. C.*, Gómez-Ramírez, O.*, Fielden, S., & McKee, G. (2023, October). Lessons from evaluating the impact of upstream health promotion initiatives [Conference presentation]. British Columbia Centre for Disease Control Research Week, Vancouver, BC, Canada. *Denotes equal contributions

Learn More

• CHPC scholars receive funding to support evaluation of “upstream” public health initiatives