The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care

The Task Force has been established by the Public Health Agency of Canada to develop clinical practice guidelines that support primary care providers in delivering preventive health care.

The mandate of the Task Force is to develop and disseminate clinical practice guidelines for primary and preventive care, based on systematic analysis of scientific evidence.

The Task Force’s activities in support of this mandate are to:

• Determine the topics for which guidelines will be developed (or updated), informed by consultation with PHAC and Health Canada, as well as health professional associations and their membership, health charities, academic institutions, guideline producers in other countries and other relevant parties.
• Direct the Evidence Synthesis Centre in the systematic review of scientific evidence according to key questions developed by the Task Force.
• Adopt a standard methodology for assessing strength of evidence based on current scientific methods.
• Identify when to involve experts in other disciplines, to ensure the comprehensiveness of the analysis.
• Identify evidence gaps that need to be filled and articulate a research agenda to facilitate new research.
• Evaluate systematic review evidence and arrive at a consensus recommendation (s).
• Develop guidance documents for each topic, which will be easily accessible to primary health care providers.

The work of the Task Force is supported by a Task Force Office within PHAC, which facilitates the work of the Task Force and disseminates its recommendations as they become available.