Canada. Health Services and Promotion Branch : The Health Services and Promotions Branch (HSPB) of the former Department of National Health and Welfare (NHW) was responsible for the development and promotion of support measures designed to preserve the health and well-being of Canadians. Working in the areas of advice and assistance for community health, mental health, institutional and professional services and facilities, the Branch strove to improve the quality, accessibility, delivery and cost-effectiveness of these services. In addition, it worked with the provincial governments to ensure that all Canadians have reasonable access to medical services through the maintenance of the hospital insurance programme.
The roots of HSPB are found in a series of divisions created in late 1945 and early 1946. The Mental Health and Dental Health Divisions were established by Order-in-Council P.C. 120/6357 of 3 October 1945. The Mental Health Division provided consultation with the provinces, public education, research and assistance services, as well as advice on mental health issues to other parts of the Department and the federal government. The Dental Health Division was established to raise the standard of dental care in Canada in cooperation with the provinces and dental associations through the preparation of a variety of dental health literature, the coordination and dissemination of relevant information, and the encouragement of research in the field of preventive dentistry, particularly for children. On 29 December 1945, Order-in-Council P.C. 186/7500 created the Hospital Design Division and the Directorate of Health Insurance Studies. Hospital Design collected and made available up-to-date information on the planning of hospitals and their construction, as well as administering federal Hospital Construction Grants under the National Health Program. The Health Insurance Studies Directorate provided a focal point for the studies and investigations carried out by the federal government in the areas of medical, hospital, dental and nursing services and the various economic methods of providing such services. Finally, the Nutrition Division, mandated to maintain and improve national health by determining the nature and extent of nutritional problems and work with other federal and provincial agencies to overcome them, was created by Order-in-Council P.C. 121/2046 of 22 May 1946.
These divisions formed the core of NHW's Health Branch until 1949, when the increasing number of activities in the Branch led to its subsequent subdivision into several directorates. Two of the directorates were Health Services (which included Mental Health, Dental Health, Hospital Design, and Nutrition) and Health Insurance Studies. While the consultant services of the former were further consolidated within Health Services, Health Insurance Studies began to take on more responsibilities, particularly as a result of the development of legislation to introduce hospital insurance. Passed by Parliament on 12 April 1957 and implemented in 1958, the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act (HIDS) provided prepaid coverage for medically necessary hospital treatment for almost all Canadians, excluding the care provided by mental, tuberculosis or nursing homes.
Following the release of the report of the Royal Commission on Health Services (the Hall Commission) on 19 June 1964, attention was focused on the development of a national system of medical insurance, or medicare. The National Medical Care Insurance Act (Medicare) was passed on 16 December 1966 and implemented on 1 July 1968. This Act, like HIDS, provided federal contributions of approximately 50% of the costs to the provinces to assist them in making necessary, non-profit, prepaid medical care available to all Canadians; it too, worked on the basis of a series of interlocking provincial plans, and covered all services of medical practitioners and certain surgical-dental procedures done by dental surgeons in hospitals.
In order to accommodate the administration of this new act, the Directorate of Health Services was reorganized in 1966 and became the Health Services Branch (HSB). The former Principal Medical Officer, Health Insurance was appointed Director General of the newly-established Health Insurance and Resources Branch (HIRB) which was composed of the Health Resources, Medical Care, Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services and Health Grants Directorates, and the Health Facilities Design Division. In 1971, the elements of HSB were combined with the HIRB, and the new entity was renamed the Health Programs Branch. Composed of five directorates (Medical Care, Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services, Health Facilities Design, Health Grants, and Health Manpower), Health Programs was an immediate forerunner of the HSPB, which was created in July 1978.
The new HSPB consisted of the Health Promotion, Extramural Research Programs, Health Services, Health Resources, and Research and Evaluation Directorates. Other important services were added in the 1980s. The Canadian Blood Secretariat was established in 1981 in order to provide professional, technical and secretariat services to the Canadian Blood Committee, which was later privatized in 1990. The Canada Health Act, which repealed the Medical Care and Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Acts, was passed in April 1984 and was administered by the Health Promotion Directorate. The Seniors Secretariat was briefly part of the HSPB between 1987 and 1989, when it became part of the Social Service Programs Branch (SSPB).
HSPB underwent a number of major organizational changes in early 1993. Composed at that time of four directorates (Health Insurance, Health Services, Health Promotion, and Extramural Research), the HSPB was merged with portions of the former SSPB and renamed the Health Programs and Promotions Branch (HPPB) in March 1993. The subsequent re-organization of the federal government in June 1993 resulted in the removal of the social welfare functions of the SSPB to the newly formed Department of Human Resources Development, and the HPPB was re-named the Health Programs and Services Branch (HPSB).
