Major Health Issues in Nova Scotia: An Environmental Scan

Methods
To identify current major health issues for Nova Scotia, demographic and
epidemiological data were reviewed from sources such as Statistics Canada,
Canadian Institute for Health Information and Nova Scotia Community Counts.
The recent Provincial Health Services Operational Review in Nova Scotia was
reviewed, as were reports on the Canadian Community Health Survey and reports
published by GPI Atlantic.
To provide a high level look at the current state of research related to each of the
health issues identified in the document, a literature search was conducted for each
topic focusing only on systematic reviews and peer-reviewed reviews (as identified
by the database record) of research for each major issue, published between 2003
and 2009. Databases consulted for each search included PubMed, CINAHL,
Cochrane Library, Bandolier, and ABI Inform (for the review related to health
human resources only). The searches and review of retrieved references and
abstracts was conducted by an individual with 22 years of health program and
policy development experience in across the breadth of Nova Scotia’s health
system, so the reviewer relied on her experience and understanding of the health
system to help identify the most appropriate references for inclusion in the
summary tables.
It is important to emphasize that the purpose of the environmental scan was not
to conduct comprehensive literature reviews. Rather, the purpose was to conduct
high-level searches related to the identified major health issues in order to provide
some understanding of the current focus and directions that current research is
taking in these areas. Additional details about each of the literature searches are
contained in Appendix 1.
Limitations
Given the scope of the project, exhaustive literature searches were not conducted
for the identified health issues. For example, although the term health disparities
was used in combination with other terms, given the substantial number of
references retrieved using these search strategies, the search was not expanded to
include related terms such as “health inequities” or “health inequalities”, which in
some jurisdictions are phrases used interchangeably or instead of “health
disparities”. References retrieved for inclusion in the summary tables were done
so on the basis of the reference title and if available, the abstract. The notes about
each reference were excerpted directly from the published abstract when available.
The project scope did not include retrieval and review of the articles referenced in
the summary tables.