History of the IDM and Framework

The IDM and its Framework were conceived in the context of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Health Promotion’s Best Practices Work Group and its ongoing exploration of best practices in health promotion. This Work Group, whose members come from public health units, community health centres, hospitals, community groups, provincial and federal government, academic institutions, and the private sector, was created as the result of an International Symposium on the Effectiveness of Health Promotion organized by the Centre for Health Promotion in June, 1996.

Initially, the Work Group focused on understanding the meaning of best practices and identifying the potential benefits and risks of taking a best practices approach to health promotion. Next it developed a set of “best practices” principles, and conducted an Ontario scan of practitioners’ needs and capacities concerning best practices. Pilot testing the IDM and its Framework became a project of a “best practices partnership” consisting of Association of Ontario Health Centres (AOHC), Ontario Public Health Benchmarking Partnership (OPHB), and Centre for Health Promotion, University of Toronto (CHP). The partnership also included the three Ontario pilot sites who generously volunteered their time and energy to participate in the pilot testing: Durham Region Health Department, East End Community Health Centre (Toronto), and The Willett Hospital (Paris). Recently, the Hospital Health Promotion Network has joined the partnership.

As a result of the positive results of the pilot testing, development continued of materials and processes to facilitate practitioners’ use of the Framework, including the IDM Evidence Framework. More sites joined the effort, this time to take part in and contribute to the IDM “bridging the gap between research and practice” learning module; these sites included: Access Alliance Multicultural CHC (Toronto); Brant Community HealthCare System (Paris and Brantford, Ontario); Peterborough County-City Health Unit; Sudbury and District Health Unit; St. Joseph's Healthcare, Women's Detox and Mary Ellis House Treatment Program (Hamilton); West Hill Community Health Centre (Toronto).

Along the way a number of other people from a variety of organizations donated time and energy to the Project in a number of different ways, from participating as key informants in interviews to reviewing material. Funding to support the Best Practices Project from its inception has been provided to the Centre for Health Promotion by Health Canada Population and Public Health Branch, Ontario Region. In the last year the Project also received support from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.