Online resources to enhance decision-making in public health.

Abstract

A virtual front door, the Canadian Best Practices Portal for Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention ("the Portal") provides access to evaluated community and population health interventions relevant to chronic disease prevention and health promotion. Designed to help Canadian public health practitioners and decision makers identify suitable interventions that they can adapt and replicate to meet their needs, the Portal is a highly accessible, easy to use and dynamic. It has a flexible search function and is supported by an extensive array of resources to inform policy and practice. Launched in 2006, the Portal forms a central pillar of the Canadian Best Practices Initiative, which was established by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to improve policy and program decision-making by enabling access to the best available evidence on chronic disease prevention and health promotion practices. Throughout each phase of the Portal's development, more and more current public health topics and new decision-making tools have been added. As of February 2011, the Portal provides information on about 357 interventions and access to 58 resources. In this article, we aim to demonstrate the unique role of the Portal within the broader context of other available online resources. We use the concept of a "pyramid of evidence" to compare the Portal with one specific resource, Health-evidence.ca, to illustrate how public health practitioners and decision makers can use these resources together to make better, more evidence-informed decisions.