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Financial strain was an issue for many Canadians long before the arrival of the global novel coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. However, it has worsened in recent months in relation to the pandemic and public health measures put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Members of underserved groups and people who experience poverty are particularly vulnerable to financial strain and its negative health impacts. As public health professionals, we should be concerned. In this commentary, we discuss the concept of financial strain and its health consequences and highlight how existing research in the area is falling short and why. We suggest next steps to guide research and practice related to financial strain such that it reflects the core values of public health, including equity, life course approaches, and the social determinants of health. This commentary is a call to action for public health researchers and practitioners in Canada to take a more prominent role in shaping the agenda on financial strain to support financial well-being for all.RéSUMé: De nombreux Canadiens subissaient une pression financière bien avant l’arrivée de la pandémie mondiale du nouveau coronavirus au début de 2020. Cette pression s’est toutefois aggravée ces derniers mois en raison de la pandémie et des mesures de santé publique mises en place pour prévenir la propagation de la COVID-19. Les membres des groupes mal desservis et les personnes aux prises avec la pauvreté sont particulièrement vulnérables à la pression financière et à ses effets néfastes sur la santé. En tant que professionnels de la santé publique, nous devrions nous en inquiéter. Dans notre commentaire, nous abordons la notion de pression financière et ses conséquences pour la santé et nous soulignons en quoi et pourquoi la recherche actuelle dans ce domaine n’est pas à la hauteur. Nous proposons des mesures pour orienter la recherche et la pratique liées à la pression financière afin qu’elles reflètent les valeurs fondamentales de la santé publique : l’équité, les approches axées sur la vie entière et les déterminants sociaux de la santé. Ce commentaire est un appel à l’action lancé aux chercheurs et aux praticiens en santé publique du Canada pour qu’ils jouent un plus grand rôle dans la définition des mesures à prendre face à la pression financière afin de favoriser le bien-être financier de tous.

Public health is critical to a healthy, fair, and sustainable society. Realizing this vision requires imagining a public health community that can maintain its foundational core while adapting and responding to contemporary imperatives such as entrenched inequities and ecological degradation. In this commentary, we reflect on what tomorrow’s public health might look like, from the point of view of our collective experiences as researchers in Canada who are part of an Applied Public Health Chairs program designed to support “innovative population health research that improves health equity for citizens in Canada and around the world.” We view applied public health research as sitting at the intersection of core principles for population and public health: namely sustainability, equity, and effectiveness. We further identify three attributes of a robust applied public health research community that we argue are necessary to permit contribution to those principles: researcher autonomy, sustained intersectoral research capacity, and a critical perspective on the research-practice-policy interface. Our intention is to catalyze further discussion and debate about why and how public health matters today and tomorrow, and the role of applied public health research therein.

BACKGROUND: Point of Purchase (PoP) promotional and advertising activities are a sophisticated tobacco marketing strategy. This study describes tobacco PoP activities in school neighbourhoods and compares PoP activities in retail stores between schools with high and low smoking prevalence. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 81 randomly selected schools across five provinces. Students in grades 10–11 completed a questionnaire on smoking. Observations were made in all retail stores located within a one-kilometre radius around the school. ANOVA tests were used to detect differences on PoP variables between high (>20.6%) and low (≤20.6%) smoking prevalence schools, defined as percentage of students reporting at least a few puffs on >2 days in the last 30 days. RESULTS: Approximately half of retail stores in each school neighbourhood exhibited tobacco PoP activities. Average school smoking prevalence was 20.99%. There were significant main effects on PoP variables between schools with high and low smoking prevalence, Wilk’s λ=0.81, F (6,74)=2.89, p