Fostering Partnerships Between Public Health Functions Within Health and Social Services Organizations: A Perspective From the Province of Quebec (canada) - Fostering Partnerships Between Public Health Functions Within Health and Social Services Organizations: A Perspective From the Province of Quebec (canada) - Open Access Pub

Health and social services organizations discriminate too much between core public health functions. Health protection actions, services, and programs are often separate from those concerned with disease prevention and health promotion. In this comment, we advocate for more partnerships between all public health functions within health and social services organizations. Stronger bridges between such teams, services, and programs are needed to move forward with a more encompassing and integrated perspective aiming for social justice and equity. In this comment, we support this position with some examples. We also use smoking-related issues from a regional representative population-based sample (Eastern Townships, Quebec, Canada) to demonstrate how we can better struggle against social inequalities with a perspective that simultaneously considers all functions of public health within actions, services, and programs of health and social services organizations. We conclude with avenues to foster such partnerships. DOI10.14302/issn.2474-3585.jpmc-16-1106 Health and social services organizations are often structured in two separate axes which supports different public health functions. From one side, health protection teams, services, and programs are concerned with issues related to infectious diseases and environmental or occupational health. They mainly deal with biological and chemical hazards that adversely contribute to health and well-being. Because a wide range of risks can occur in a population at any given time and since these risks require prompt public health responses, health protection teams must have a significant expertise on common agents that threaten population’s health. On the other side, disease prevention and health promotion teams, services, and programs advocate for strategies enabling people and communities to increase control over their health. They deal with health/well-being and health-related behaviors (particularly among vulnerable groups) rather than on external threats and more immediate hazards. Given the wide range of outcomes covered by health promotion and disease prevention actors, the expertise of such teams must be related to strategies and interventions rather than on the causative agent itself. There is absolutely no doubt that actors of both teams have contributed to the understanding of health and diseases, their unequal distribution and ways to enhance population’s health. However, they insufficiently exchange together despite a huge crossbreeding potential. As the regional Public Health Director, researchers,