BackgroundIn recent years, obesity-related diseases have been on the rise globally resulting in major challenges for health systems and society as a whole. Emerging research in population health suggests that interventions targeting the built environment may help reduce the burden of obesity and type 2 diabetes. However, translation of the evidence on the built environment into effective policy and planning changes requires engagement and collaboration between multiple sectors and government agencies for designing neighborhoods that are more conducive to healthy and active living. In this study, we identified knowledge gaps and other barriers to evidence-based decision-making and policy development related to the built environment; as well as the infrastructure, processes, and mechanisms needed to drive policy changes in this area.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of data collected through consultations with a broad group of stakeholders (N = 42) from Southern Ontario, Canada, within various sectors (public health, urban planning, and transportation) and levels of government (federal, provincial, and municipalities). Relevant themes were classified based on the specific phase of the knowledge-to-action cycle (research, translation, and implementation) in which they were most closely aligned.ResultsWe identified 5 themes including: 1) the need for policy-informed and actionable research (e.g. health economic analyses and policy evaluations); 2) impactful messaging that targets all relevant sectors to create the political will necessary to drive policy change; 3) common measures and tools to increase capacity for monitoring and surveillance of built environment changes; (4) intersectoral collaboration and alignment within and between levels of government to enable collective actions and provide mechanisms for sharing of resources and expertise, (5) aligning public and private sector priorities to generate public demand and support for community action; and, (6) solution-focused implementation of research that will be tailored to meet the needs of policymakers and planners. Additional research priorities and key policy and planning actions were also noted.ConclusionOur research highlights the necessity of involving stakeholders in identifying inter-sectoral solutions to develop and translate actionable research on the built environment into effective policy and planning initiatives.

Engaging peer-interviewers in qualitative inquiry is becoming more popular. Yet, there are differing opinions as to whether this practice improves the research process or is prohibitively challenging. Benefits noted in the literature are improved awareness/acceptance of disenfranchised groups, improved quality of research, and increased comfort of participants in the research process. Challenges include larger investment in time and money to hire, train, and support peerinterviewers, and the potential to disrupt peer recovery. We illustrate, through case study, how to engage peer-interviewers, meet potential challenges, and the benefits of such engagement. We draw upon our experience from a qualitative study designed to understand men's experiences of problem gambling and housing instability. We hired three peers to conduct semi-structured qualitative interviews with 30 men from a community-based organization. We contend, that with appropriate and adequate resources (time, financial investment), peer-interviewing produces a positive, capacity building experience for peer-interviewers, participants and researchers.

Study design: Cohort study. Objectives: To provide recent estimates of the incidence of traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) in adults living in Ontario. Setting: Ontario, Canada. Methods: The study included all men and women aged 18 years and older living in Ontario. The two primary data sources used for this study were the census data provided by Statistics Canada and the hospital Discharge Abstract Database (DAD) provided by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Incidence was estimated for the fiscal years 2003/04-2006/07, and examined by age, gender, mechanism and seasonality of injury, the level of injury, the presence of comorbidity and in-hospital mortality. Results: The incident cases had a mean age of 51.3 years (s.d. 20.1). The majority of the cases was male (74.1%) and had a cervical SCI caused by falls (49.5%). The age-adjusted incidence rate was stable over the 4-year study period, from 24. Conclusion: Despite worldwide trends that have indicated motor vehicle collisions (MVCs) as the leading cause of injury, falls emerged as the leading cause of traumatic SCI in this study. This finding, and the fact that the number of fall-induced injuries increased steadily with age, may indicate that there is growing concern for the consequences of falls in the elderly. Further work is needed to understand this trend in age and gender and the causes of falls to develop effective fall prevention strategies.