Public health includes those efforts organized by society to protect, promote, and restore the people’s health. The focus of a public health intervention is to prevent rather than treat a disease through surveillance of cases and the promotion of healthy behaviors. Since the 1980s, the growing field of population health has broadened the focus of public health from individual behaviors and risk factors to population-level issues such as inequality, poverty, and education. (Wikipedia, 2006)

Social determinants of health consider “the socio-economic conditions that influence the health of individuals, communities and jurisdictions as a whole. These determinants also establish the extent to which a person possesses the physical, social and personal resources to identify and achieve personal aspirations, satisfy needs and cope with the environment.” (http://www.cspi.org/books/s/socialdeter.htm)

The following knowledge initiatives and knowledge transfer vehicles are organized according to 1) adult learning and education, 2) health and learning, and 3) specifically according to the five priorities of the AWG as noted in the introduction.

The rationale for including sources that appear under each of the eight categories is to provide a comprehensive national overview. In cases where international work strongly connects to national work, these sources have also been included. Significant provincial/territorial or local sources have also been included where they contribute to the national picture, or where there is an absence of information on a topic at the national level.

Where possible, we have included web links for sources. Most sources are annotated so the readers can easily access the specific information they are looking for.

Sometimes references are repeated if they have relevance to more than one area. In other cases, references could belong under more than one AWG priority. In these cases, we made a choice as to the most appropriate place to include them.