The following is an announcement from the Ministry of Health.
In May 2024, the Minister of Health directed the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) to initiate an external review of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care (the Task Force). The review assessed the Task Force’s governance, mandate, and processes.
Composed of a Panel of thirteen independent experts, the External Expert Review (the Panel) was asked to provide actionable recommendations to enhance the Task Force’s capacity to support Canada’s health care system, using primary health care as the vehicle to improving population health outcomes.
The Panel conducted focused assessments, engaged with a wide range of interest holders, and reviewed international comparators and expert analyses to identify strategic opportunities for modernizing the Task Force. As Canada’s preventive health landscape continues to evolve, the Task Force must adapt to better serve the needs of patients, families, and caregivers — as well as those of diverse primary care health professionals, and the provincial programs and quality councils that support them.
This evolution is critical to ensuring that Task Force guidance remains rigorous, inclusive, contextualizable, and responsive to real-world practice.
The vision guiding this review is to ensure that everyone in Canada regardless of geography, background, socioeconomic status, or identity — including those from equity-denied groups such as Indigenous and Black communities — has access to high-quality, equity-centred, context-sensitive, evidence-based, and coordinated guidance on preventive health services.
The Task Force plays a central role in delivering scientifically sound recommendations to support preventive health care in clinical settings across the country. To better align the Task Force with current system realities and ensure long-term effectiveness, this report presents twelve recommendations that provide a clear and coherent roadmap for modernization, strengthened governance, and stable operational support. It also includes three supplementary recommendations aimed at addressing broader system-wide challenges and advancing national coordination in preventive health guideline development.
The recommendations include:
- Modernize the mandate and rename the Task Force
- Clarify the Task Force’s role in a crowded landscape
- Evolve the Task Force methodological framework
- Implement a phased living guidelines model
- Strengthen practice adoption through partnership and adaptation
- Prioritize equity in topic selection
- Establish a model for equity-centred patient and public engagement
- Build a competency-based and inclusive membership and nomination framework
- Formalize Subject Matter Expert (SME) engagement
- Adopt a tiered Conflict of Interest (COI) Framework
- Establish long-term funding and secretariat support
- Reconstitute the Task Force as an External Advisory Body
For more information on the recommendations, click HERE.