About Us

Our Centre

The NCCEH is one of six National Collaborating Centres created in 2005 to foster linkages and provide knowledge translation within Canada’s public health community. The centres are funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) through the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health (NCCPH) program. The NCCEH is hosted within the BC Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver, BC.

The other National Collaborating Centres are:

• National Collaborating Centre for the Determinants of Health 
  (NCCDH) at St. Francis Xavier University (Antigonish, NS);
• National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy 
  (NCCHPP) at the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (Montréal, QC);
• National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health 
  (NCCIH) at the University of Northern British Columbia (Prince George, BC);
• National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease 
  (NCCID) at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, MB);
• National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools 
  (NCCMT) at McMaster University (Hamilton, ON).

Our commitment to truth and reconciliation

The NCCEH recognizes the lands, rights, and knowledges of Indigenous Peoples, and the ongoing harms of colonization. We are committed to our role in building a better future. Read more about our commitment.

Our vision

Our vision is to be the indispensable online resource for environmental health practitioners and policy-makers across Canada. We focus on health benefits and risks associated with natural and built environments and identify evidence-based information to mitigate those risks. We work to:

• Synthesize, translate, and exchange knowledge for environmental health practitioners and policy-makers;
• Identify gaps in research and practice knowledge; and
• Build capacity through networks of practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers.
   

Our approach

The NCCEH stays abreast of current environmental public health issues through a variety of mechanisms, including:

• Direct feedback and consultation, as well as inquiries through [email protected];
• Hosting the Healthy Built Environment Forum and various other working groups;
• Participation in federal, provincial and territorial working groups;
• Monthly scans of the latest environmental public health literature;
• Needs assessments surveys;
• External program evaluation;
• Our advisory board composed of senior EPH professionals from across Canada.

These various sources help us to identify knowledge gaps and emerging concerns, and prioritize new projects. Our work is guided by the urgency of the topic and it’s relevance to environmental health, our in-house capacity or expertise to address the topic, and the availability of sufficient and appropriate information sources.  
 

Our resources

Our work draws from a variety of knowledge sources, including academic research, expert knowledge and practical experience. Our resource types are as follows:

• Evidence briefs synthesize the available evidence and expert knowledge in a short format to facilitate quick reading (<3,000 words or about 10 minutes). These documents are based on NCCEH’s rapid literature review search and appraisal protocol and are internally reviewed before publication.
• Evidence reviews are used to address subjects with a deeper knowledge base and are typically longer reads (>3,000 words). These documents are also based on NCCEH’s rapid literature review search and appraisal protocol and are both internally and externally reviewed before publication.
• Webinars present findings from recent NCCEH projects or new work from our EPH network.
• Subject guides provide a curated list of NCCEH and external resources on a variety of environmental public health subjects.
• Journal articles include a collection of NCCEH article submissions to the open access publication Environmental Health Review, the dedicated CIPHI journal, along with other peer-reviewed journal articles that NCCEH staff have contributed to.
• Courses are developed with the help of subject matter experts and are provided in a free, online format to help EHP practitioners develop their skills at their own pace.
• Blogs present short overviews of emerging issues, NCCEH events or webinars, and perspectives from our EPH network/community.
• Environmental Health Research Scans provide monthly curation of the most recent academic publications on a broad range of environmental health topics.
• Videos encapsulate key messages on important environmental health issues in three minutes or less.
• eNews is a monthly email bulletin for subscribers highlighting our latest resources, upcoming NCCEH webinars and external events. An archive of past eNews can be found here.

Both evidence briefs and reviews may involve consultation with knowledge users and subject matter experts to ensure that the document is appropriately scoped. Evidence briefs and reviews may also be periodically updated if warranted by new research. A suggested citation is provided at the end of the document and they can also be downloaded as PDFs.

Third party use of our resources
We welcome the use of our written materials and resources without alteration for non-commercial purposes only. Any use of NCCEH developed materials and resources shall be accompanied by a written acknowledgement of the NCCEH as the source. Usage includes, but is not limited to downloading, printing, posting on websites or hardcopy, distributing electronically or in hardcopy. Requests to adapt our publications, posters, or products must be submitted in writing to [email protected].

Feedback and suggestions

If you have found our work helpful, please share with us how you used our work, so that we may continue to produce resources that are relevant to you. We welcome your suggestions of environmental public health topics or issues for which evidence synthesis is needed to inform practice, policy, and research.