Promoting Health

Delivering evidence-informed population health initiatives to promote health and reduce health inequities.

Who we are

Promoting Health is part of Primary Care Alberta. Our work focuses on promoting health, preventing disease and protecting from harms where people live, learn, work, play and heal. Our programs, interventions and resources have broad applicability across geography, age and settings, and we tailor our work to meet the needs of populations and settings experiencing inequities.

Our core functions

  • Setting provincial health promotion priorities with populations.
  • Engaging and supporting capacity building with partners and the public.
  • Developing provincial and associated policies, standards and guidelines.
  • Providing evidence-based health promotion, disease and injury prevention, and harm reduction information for health care providers and the public.
  • Providing health promotion expertise and support for best practices for engaging with communities, workplaces, health services and schools.
  • Providing oral health planning, research, surveillance and dental services in select settings. 
  • Providing tobacco cessation programs such as QuitCore and the Tobacco Cessation Toolkit.
  • Leading central procurement, distribution, tracking, education, and reporting of harm reduction supplies.

Fiscal year 2024-2025

Increased adoption of health promotion programming across all settings: 

  • Health promotion teams supported 7 Healthier Together initiative communities to advance local priorities through capacity building and responsive tools and resources.
  • Engaged with 80% of public, separate and francophone school authorities and two First Nations school authorities to increase adoption of school health promotion programs and improve student health.
  • 20 new workplaces registered for the Healthier Together Workplaces program to strengthen workplace environments and improve employee health and wellbeing.

Increased knowledge and intention to use learnings from health promotion training sessions among partners: 

  • 10,434 participants completed 316 online and in-person training and learning sessions on topics including oral health, tobacco cessation, injury prevention, community asset mapping and prioritization, school health promotion and sexual health. 
  • 95% of participants reported an increase in knowledge or skills; 87% intended to use learnings in their practice or found the information useful. 

Increased awareness and knowledge of health promotion information: 

  • Implemented six new online courses and training programs on: breastfeeding, commercial and Indigenous sacred tobacco, suicide prevention, comprehensive school health and falls prevention.
  • Created or updated tools and resources to support settings-based health promotion including 37 resources for schools, five resources for workplaces and 4 resources for communities. 

Increased intention to improve health behaviours by using health promotion strategies: 

  • Tobacco and vaping cessation services and supports were utilized 1688 times.