Penny wise, pound foolish
=========================

* Christina Mills

*   © 2004 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors

It was with some alarm that I read recently in *CMAJ* 1 that the survival of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care is in doubt because of a funding crunch.

Making the best use of available knowledge and resources involves systematic assessment of research evidence, with a view to ensuring that we invest only in interventions that have been demonstrated to be effective. The task force has been a world leader in assessing and disseminating best practices in clinical prevention. Its current level of funding is actually rather puny, in relation to both the value of its work and the scale of the challenges it faces in keeping up with a constantly growing body of evidence. Rather than discontinuing the capacity to perform that function for clinical prevention, we should be applying the same approach to the population-level interventions that are the purview of public health.

The Board of Directors of the Canadian Public Health Association calls on Health Canada to continue financial and infrastructure support for guidelines for clinical preventive services. In addition, we urge the creation of a similar mechanism for developing best- practices guidelines for community-based and population-level prevention.

It would indeed be penny-wise and pound foolish to dismantle this pillar of evidence-based medicine and one of Canada's best tools for ensuring that the resources allocated to the health care system are used wisely.

**Christina Mills** President Canadian Public Health Association Ottawa, Ont.

## Reference

1.  1. Obituary: the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care [editorial]. CMAJ 2003;169 (11): 1137.
    
    [FREE Full Text](http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/ijlink/YTozOntzOjQ6InBhdGgiO3M6MTQ6Ii9sb29rdXAvaWpsaW5rIjtzOjU6InF1ZXJ5IjthOjQ6e3M6ODoibGlua1R5cGUiO3M6NDoiRlVMTCI7czoxMToiam91cm5hbENvZGUiO3M6NDoiY21haiI7czo1OiJyZXNpZCI7czoxMToiMTY5LzExLzExMzciO3M6NDoiYXRvbSI7czoyMjoiL2NtYWovMTcwLzQvNDQ1LjIuYXRvbSI7fXM6ODoiZnJhZ21lbnQiO3M6MDoiIjt9)