Making sense of what exactly public health does: a typology of public health interventions.

Setting: Montréal.

Intervention: The lack of common knowledge about what public health does is a hindrance to its recognition and capacity to act. Montréal's regional public health department set an explicit goal to clarify and better communicate its specific contributions when it developed its 2016-2021 action plan.

Professional development programs in health promotion: tools and processes to favor new practices.

Developing innovative interventions that are in sync with a health promotion paradigm often represents a challenge for professionals working in local public health organizations. Thus, it is critical to have both professional development programs that favor new practices and tools to examine these practices. In this case study, we analyze the health promotion approach used in a pilot intervention addressing children's vulnerability that was developed and carried out by participants enrolled in a public health professional development program.

An analysis of the adaptability of a professional development program in public health: results from the ALPS Study.

Background: Professional development is a key component of effective public health infrastructures. To be successful, professional development programs in public health and health promotion must adapt to practitioners' complex real-world practice settings while preserving the core components of those programs' models and theoretical bases. An appropriate balance must be struck between implementation fidelity, defined as respecting the core nature of the program that underlies its effects, and adaptability to context to maximize benefit in specific situations.

Implementing comprehensive population-accountable health networks in Quebec.

Local health networks were established in 2003 across the province of Quebec as a strategy to make the health system more responsive. This article examines the challenges encountered in the context of this reform and outlines key issues facing network management and governance to achieve the Triple Aim.