Nova Scotia's Renewed Injury Prevention Strategy - Government of ...

Key ConceptsThe involvement of so many sectors andorganizations in injury prevention can lead toconfusion around language, roles, and approaches.The intent of this section is to highlight somecommon approaches—those that are grounded inevidence and best practices, and that are integral toour work. This section explains six key interrelatedconcepts that are used nationally and internationallyto promote health and lead to a reduction in illnessand injuries. These six key concepts must be appliedin our injury prevention work in Nova Scotia.Population health builds on the five strategiesoutlined in the Ottawa Charter for HealthPromotion 30 to impact the social determinants ofhealth, reduce health disparities, and improve theoverall health of the population.Health PromotionPopulation health approaches in Canada andinternationally draw heavily from the field of healthpromotion, particularly the Ottawa Charter forHealth Promotion. The Charter advances fiveessential strategies for promoting health andpreventing injury and illness:Taking It to the Next Level Nova Scotia’s Renewed Injury Prevention StrategyPopulation Health“Population health builds on a long tradition ofpublic health and health promotion.” 29 Drawing onthe strategies of health promotion (explainedbelow), population health is a widely usedframework for understanding patterns of health,illness, and injury on a population-wide scale. Apopulation health perspective on injury preventionleads to questions such as: What kinds of injuriesare occurring? Are certain population groups morelikely to be injured? Are there conditions in thesocial and physical environment that lead to thelikelihood of injury? Taking a population healthapproach to injury prevention means• focusing on the entire population as well as subgroupswithin the population• using health promotion strategies to engage inactions at multiple levels and in multiple settings• addressing the social determinants of health andtheir interactions• paying particular attention to populations wherethe greatest health disparities exist• collaborating across the boundaries of varioussectors• engaging with communities• making evidence-informed decisions and beingaccountable for the results• Building healthy public policy—Putting health onthe agenda of policy makers in all sectors and atall levels.• Creating supportive environments—Recognizingthe influences of social and physical environmentsand the need for healthy and safe choices to beavailable for everyone.• Strengthening community action—Empoweringcommunities to take control and ownership oftheir own endeavors and destinies.• Developing personal skills—Increasing the abilityof people to exercise more control over their owndestinies and the environments that influencetheir health.• Reorienting health and other services—Responding to the need to focus on preventionrather than treatment. While the focus hastypically been on reorienting health services, othersectors such as the justice system can also play apowerful role in meaningfully impacting the rootcauses of injury and poor health.34