Healthy Public Policies

public administration, governance and policy analysis. The main purpose of the article is to suggest how political science can contribute to public health science, policy and practice. Research about healthy public policies tends to ignore the political. To move forward, the authors propose areas for future collaborative research. Our intent is to clarify and build on the discussion drawing from our years of experience in public health research and practice. We are a research team made up of practitioners from five health units, academics from two universities, a medical officer of health and a director from a local health planning agency. Many of us have sat on key policy advisory committees at provincial and national levels. Our project is funded by a unique grant program that supports applied, collaborative research partnerships (https://www.publichealthontario.ca/ ldcp). This commentary caught our eye because our project was rapidly developed and funded by Public Health Ontario, an arm's length operational service agency of the provincial government in response to a new law in Ontario, called the Patients First Act. The Act requires public health units to work with local health planning agencies and use a population health approach to plan health services for a community. We are exploring values, goals, definitions, processes, structures and use of population health information to determine the key elements of successful public health unit and regional health planning agency collaborations. We are also identifying relevant population and health system types and sources of information to inform indicators that could strengthen these collaborations. Thus, our work sits in the research domain of public health systems and services, and we are generating research findings to contribute to how the policy will be implemented in the province. This is work with immediate relevance.