Research Guides: Health Sciences: Public Health

Evidence-Informed Public Health: pyramid of pre-processed evidence

Evidence-Informed Public Health

Evidence-Informed Public Health -- National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools
Access links to pre-appraised search tools to retrieve summaries, synopses of syntheses, syntheses (systematic reviews) and other critically appraised research evidence

Health Evidence This link opens in a new window
Find systematic reviews and synopses of systematic reviews evaluating the efficacy of public health interventions.

Finding grey literature

What's grey literature? It's research and information released by non-commercial publishers, such as government agencies, policy organizations, and think-tanks. Grey literature can be hard to find, because it's not accessible through traditional academic databases. But its timely and focused content make it an essential component of conducting health research.

Some tools to help you find good grey lit:

Searching the Grey Literature : A Handbook for Searching Reports, Working Papers, and Other Unpublished Research by Sarah Bonato
ISBN: 9781538100653
Publication Date: 2018
Searching the Grey Literature discuss different aspects of grey literature, including an introduction to grey literature, the value of grey literature, search sources for grey literature and how to conduct needs assessment before beginning a grey literature search. Search techniques for identifying grey literature documents, selecting and evaluating grey literature search sources and best searching practices are also discussed in detail.

Canadian Public Documents Collection @ Scholars Portal This link opens in a new window
Find health and medicine related documents from various Canadian research institutes, government agencies and universities. Many of these documents are related to issues concerning health policy.
Policy File Index This link opens in a new window
-Reports from more than 350 Canadian and American think-tanks and public policy organizations
-Search topic keywords or browse by subject, political leaning

Grey matters: a practical search tool for evidence-based medicine
Published by the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH), this tool provides a comprehensive listing of international grey literature sources on topic areas including health technology assessment, advisories and warnings, statistics and open-access journals.
Public Health Grey Literature Database - from Ontario Public Health Library Association
Find grey literature from Ontario's 36 public health units and other provincial knowledge-producing public health organizations.

Public Health Programming

The National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools "provides leadership and expertise in evidence-informed decision making to Canadian public health organizations."

The NCCMT provides access to many resources for planning and evaluating public health programming including: