Portrait of public health research in Quebec, 1999 to 2004.

This article presents the main findings of a descriptive study inventorying public health research in Quebec funded by provincial and federal government bodies between 1999 and 2004. The database was created specifically for this project from the Banque de la recherche sociale et en santé (Health and Social Research Databank) of the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services, using a frame of reference to demarcate and categorize research in public health. The results reveal that public health research projects accounted for 13.

Perception of place and health: differences between neighbourhoods in the Québec City region.

This paper addresses two questions: (1) Can people's perceptions of problems and social cohesion in the neighbourhood be considered as contextual variables; and (2) are these perceptions related to people's health? Data come from a general health survey carried out in 2004 among 1634 individuals living in three localities of the region of Québec City, namely a downtown, a suburban and a rural area, which were further subdivided into 34 smaller spatial units, hereafter called neighbourhoods. The survey included questions on individuals' perception of problems (social and environmental) and social cohesion (attraction to neighbourhood, neighbouring and psychological sense of community) in the neighbourhood, as well as questions on self-rated health, long-term disability and self-mastery. A first set of logistic multilevel models was performed to ascertain the existence of neighbourhood variations in the perception of problems and social cohesion, after accounting for individual attributes.