Centre for Health Promotion Research (CHPR)

The answer is quite a bit, but the conversation hasn’t gotten very far yet.

For example, I didn’t meet anyone else from public health at last week’s David Suzuki Foundation Green Café to discuss gaps and opportunities for the green economy. I did meet people from businesses and labour, sustainability consultants, and recent grads (e.g., chemical engineering).

Also, most of the publications I found while working on a research proposal on climate justice were not from public health. The perspectives were economic and labour, social, and environmental.

As climate change continues to affect the entire planet, the green economy is projected to grow. It’s time for public health to have a bigger voice in the green economy. Climate is environment, and environment is one of the determinants of health. Public health will also need to address the health inequities that result because the already disadvantaged (e.g., the poor) will be more negatively affected by climate change.

But what can public health do?

First, public health can go where the conversations are already happening. There is still a lot of evolving dialogue on the green economy. There is room to learn and to seek opportunities for partnerships.

Second, public health can initiate new conversations. Take advantage of the momentum of the green economy.

Having a voice is just the beginning, but it has to start somewhere. Climate change affects us all. It’s too important for public health not to have a bigger voice.

Your life is shaped by your friends, your friends’ friends, and their friends. That is what Dr. Nicolas Christakis told an audience last night in Vancouver.

Dr. Christakis is a professor from Harvard with backgrounds in medicine and sociology who conducts research on social networks. Don’t just think Facebook or Twitter. Social networks are so much more. They include traditional face-to-face relationships and any other form of relationship.

Dr. Christakis has found clusters of social networks for phenomena such as obesity and depression. If you are obese, your friends (and their friends) are more likely to be obese as well. On the other hand, he has also found clusters of social networks for something more upbeat – happiness. If you are happy, your friends (and their friends) are more likely to be happy as well.

So are we entirely shaped by who we know? The answer is no. We can actually influence those around us as well. So what does this mean for public health?

Dr. Christakis believes that a social network approach can be used to design public health interventions. This means finding the people at the centre of extensive social clusters, and aiming to improve health for these people as well as their friends, their friends’ friends and so on.

In the past, public health interventions have used peer support to help individuals maintain improvements to health. However, these peers tend to be seen as support rather than being part of the target population. Under a social network approach, peers would be improving their own health as well. It would be like a buddy system, but not just one-on-one. For example, a group of 11 friends who all know each other could improve health together. However, it doesn’t stop there. Their friends and their friends’ friends could be involved as well.

The challenge for public health is how to identify who is at the centre of social clusters. These data are not traditionally collected in the field of public health. One way is to work with social network researchers to design interventions that tap into existing data. If there is money, perhaps new data could be collected on previously unexplored populations.

But all this is relatively new, so some pilot projects would provide useful lessons on designing public health interventions using a social network approach, as well as evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions.

Interest in harnessing social networks continues to increase. The private sector and commercial marketers have certainly been harnessing social networks with some successes and of course some lessons learned. Perhaps it’s time for the public health sector to jump on the bandwagon.

In February 2011, our Centre hosted a forum on an emerging and exciting topic – how can businesses help create a better society? The ideas discussed at the forum were used to develop an educational, interactive application.

To see the application and learn more, go to the Business Forum page.

Advance access is now available for a new article from the health literacy research team that includes individuals from the Centre for Health Promotion Research:

Begoray DL and Kwan B (2011). A Canadian exploratory study to define a measure of health literacy. Health Promotion International.

The article reports on a study that explored a definition of health literacy and its measurement. Specifically, the study explored health literacy in terms of finding, understanding, evaluating, and communicating health information.

The Centre for Population Health Promotion Research is hosting a forum in Vancouver, BC on Wednesday, February 23, 2011 on the topic of how businesses can help create a better society.

For more information on this past event, see the Business Forum page.