Transforming Public Health: IPPH Strategic Plan, 2022-2026 - Healthy Cities
Transforming Public Health: IPPH Strategic Plan, 2022-2026
Healthy Cities
Overarching goal
Maximize the potential of urban areas to promote better health and equity across all populations.
In the wake of a global pandemic and continued urbanization, understanding the health-promoting potential of urban environments has never been more important. After laying the groundwork, IPPH's Healthy Cities priority area became CIHR's Healthy Cities Research Initiative (HCRI), a 10-year, $44+ million major initiative in collaboration with six CIHR Institutes and numerous other partners. With many ambitious goals set out by the leading institutes, much work remains to be done.
Our unfinished agenda is heavily centred on equity and ensuring that postal codes are no longer a strong predictor of health. This includes a deeper dive into research that centres the diverse experiences of Urban Indigenous communities across the country; better understanding how the built environment, policies and programming in cities impact sex and gender; and supporting the development and integration of timely and high-quality data for healthy cities research. Fostering connections between researchers and their partners will be critical to share lessons learned and to scale up interventions across disciplines and among urban centres. Achieving these goals will require IPPH to focus on strengthening intersectoral engagement with cities and building a community of practice within the growing healthy cities research community.
| Healthy Cities | Objective | Strategies | Embedding equity | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Research excellence | Deepen the understanding of how cities promote health and health equity | Fill knowledge gaps through both data science and intersectoral partnerships Identify opportunities to learn from urban contexts outside of Canada |
Target and protect investments for research with and by people facing conditions of marginalization | An evidence-base that allows cities to become engines of good health |
| Capacity-building | Cultivate the next generation of healthy cities implementation science leaders through training and mentorship opportunities | Develop applied training and leadership opportunities that promote intersectoral solutions and build health equity Fund and support trainees, including through the Healthy Cities Research Training Platform, and connect them with the wider HCRI network |
Prioritize research that builds an evidence base in under-researched areas such as better understanding the gendered impacts of urban spaces and the diverse experiences of Urban Indigenous communities | Cohorts of researchers that are trained to work with cities to address the social determinants of health and identify what interventions work for whom, when and why |
| Knowledge mobilization | Create opportunities for cities and researchers to work together to implement evidence-informed interventions | Fund annual opportunities for city-to-city learning on evidence-informed health interventions Identify opportunities for research that is co-led by researchers and implementation partners Foster an intersectoral community of practice among the HCRI-funded researchers, community partners, government agencies and implementation experts |
Elevate the voices of community organizations by identifying and adapting funding mechanisms that recognize their essential contributions to research | Cities that seek and use research-based solutions to achieve their health and health equity goals |
Initiative info
Funding opportunities
For a list of current and past funding opportunities, visit the HCRI Funding web page.
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