title: Whole-of-society approach for public health policymaking: a case study of polycentric governance from Quebec, Canada.
abstract: In adopting a whole-of-society (WoS) approach that engages multiple stakeholders in public health policies across contexts, the authors propose that effective governance presents a challenge. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a case for how polycentric governance underlying the WoS approach is already functioning, while outlining an agenda to enable adaptive learning for improving such governance processes. Drawing upon a case study from Quebec, Canada, we employ empirically developed concepts from extensive, decades-long work of the 2009 Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom in the governance of policy in nonhealth domains to analyze early efforts at polycentric governance in policies around overnutrition, highlighting interactions between international, domestic, state and nonstate actors and processes. Using information from primary and secondary sources, we analyze the emergence of the broader policy context of Quebec's public health system in the 20th century. We present a microsituational analysis of the WoS approach for Quebec's 21st century policies on healthy lifestyles, emphasizing the role of governance at the community level. We argue for rethinking prescriptive policy analysis of the 20th century, proposing an agenda for diagnostic policy analysis, which explicates the multiple sets of actors and interacting variables shaping polycentric governance for operationalizing the WoS approach to policymaking in specific contexts.
authors.affiliation: McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE) and the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
authors.forename: Nii A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Addy
authors.affiliation: Institut national de santé publique du Québec, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Poirier
authors.affiliation: Agri-food and health, Institut national de santé publique du Québec, Québec City, Québec, Canada.
authors.forename: Chantal
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Blouin
authors.affiliation: McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE) and the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.|London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, England.
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Drager
authors.affiliation: McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE) and the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
authors.forename: Laurette
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dubé
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D003132:Commerce; D003657:Decision Making; D017753:Ecosystem; D005502:Food; D006076:Government; D006262:Health; D006291:Health Policy; D008019:Life Style; D011050:Policy Making; D011634:Public Health / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D011640:Public Policy; D011792:Quebec
keywords: diagnostic policy analysis; multi-stakeholder partnerships; polycentric governance; public health policy; whole-of-society