Documentation of practices in the Smoke-Free Ontario Strategy: Providing practice-based evidence to advance evidence-informed tobacco control practice

Evidence-based decision-making and the use of evidence-based practices become increasingly important for public health professionals. However, public health professional decision-making and practice are complex processes requiring a range of information and evidence. As part of the Learning through Evidence, Action and Reflection Networks (LEARN) project we offer an approach to the identification and documentation of practice-based evidence to inform tobacco practices. The objective of this presentation is to demonstrate how the documentation of practices is informing tobacco control in Ontario. The documentation of practices describes the development and implementation of practices, recognizes key success factors, as well as possibilities for future improvements. It also reports on the effectiveness of a practice in a given population and context, exploring the mechanisms contributing to effects. This will facilitate tobacco control practitioners learning from each other's experiences. Further, using a pragmatic theory-based approach to generating practice-based evidence, the documentation of practices helps our understanding of the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes associated with successful interventions thus contributing to evidence-based practice. Finally, the documentation of practices will provided the research community with practice-based evidence on effective tobacco control practices, offering insight into what is relevant in practice. It is hoped that this will guide the production of relevant research useful to practitioners. As such, the documentation of practice provides an approach to knowledge exchange that can inform both research and practice.