Since our last newsletter in March, life has changed in many ways for all of us. We have all adjusted our work plans, family life, how we spend our free time and holiday plans for the foreseeable future. Many of the ordinary daily acts of meeting, working together and socialising are completely altered or simply not possible for the moment. To those of you in the IFIC Ireland family who have lost a loved one during this time, we extend our deepest condolences.
We have updates in this newsletter on our workplan, from our partners and the wider IFIC network. We will be restarting our webinar series on August 11th next with a session on Inclusion Health – more important now as Covid-19 continues to expose and deepen societal inequalities that threaten the health of those most vulnerable in our population. ICIC20 is back as Virtual ICIC20 in September – more details below. Our colleagues at the International Foundation for Integrated Care have produced the thought leadership paper ‘Realising the True Value of Integrated Care: Beyond Covid-19′ which outlines the pillars of Integrated Care and what these mean in a post-Covid19 care delivery ecosystem.
For any queries or updates, please get in touch with Karen O’ Connell, IFIC Ireland Co-Ordinator @ karenoconnell@integratedcarefoundation.org
Realising the True Value of Integrated Care: Beyond Covid-19
“Realising the true value of integrated care: Beyond COVID-19”, is a thought leadership report published by the Foundation which states that Covid19 presents an opportunity to reset our fragmented health and care systems so that they are integrated, driven by people and communities and resilient in the face of future systemic shocks.The current crisis represents an opportunity to do things better and speed up integration of our health and care systems so that they are more resilient in the future. This report, which brought together many global perspectives from across IFIC’s network, was written and collated by Leo Lewis, Director for Research and Development and Nieves Ehrenberg, Senior Researcher, and describes the issues with and opportunities for strengthening the enablers of integration.
IFIC Ireland co-hosted the Digital Solutions webinar session in the ‘Care during and beyond the Covid-19 crisis’ series featuring Amanda Carty, NRH; Anne-Marie Cunningham, NHS Wales; Jordi Piera Jiménez, Open University of Catalonia; Jay Shaw, Women’s College Hospital Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care Ontario; and Martin Curley; HSE Digital Transformation.
The webinar recording is now available to watch and has also been converted to a podcast so you can listen while on the go! You can also catch up with the 4 previous sessions hosted by IFIC and our hub partners in Australia, Canada and Scotland.
ValueCare Update
The EU-funded ValueCare project has made great progress since being launched in December 2019. The ValueCare project aims to deliver personalized integrated health and social care services, better outcomes for citizens, improved care experience, improved staff satisfaction and greater efficiency in the use of resources and coordination of care in a setting that ensures trust of users and policy makers with regard to data access, protection and sharing and which can be replicated and deployed at large scale in other EU countries (The Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Croatia).
More specifically, in Ireland, the ValueCare project focuses on co-designing a digital solution to help older people (≥75) experiencing mild to moderate frailty to live independently in their homes.
Read more on the Irish Pilot Site in Andrew Darley’s blog. Andrew is a post doc researcher and will be the main point of contact for the Irish pilot project.
Making Integrated Care Happen Webinar Series
Our 2020 webinar series continues on August 11th next with a session on Inclusion Health and tackling the Social Determinants of Health (include piece from website about the session here). On September 8th, Cormac Russell and Michelle Nelson will explore the role of volunteerism and community development approaches in delivering integrated care.
Tuesday, 11 August 2PM GMT
Inclusion health is a service, research, and policy agenda that aims to prevent and redress health and social inequities among the most vulnerable and excluded populations. Addressing social inequalities to ensure the best health outcomes for populations at risk at the earliest possible point of intervention can help to benefit lifelong health.
Dr Sharon Lambert will outline how childhood traumatic events can impact on health outcomes throughout life. The need to design services for appropriate delivery for individuals handling trauma and the impacts of stressful and traumatic circumstances will also be explored. Prof Clíona Ní Cheallaigh will speak about her work on improving access to healthcare for some of Ireland’s most vulnerable and socially excluded populations and how integration of services should address social inclusion at its core
Role of volunteers and community development organisations as partners in the delivery of Integrated Care
Tuesday, 8 September 2PM GMT
Michelle Nelson of Sinai Health System and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto will speak about the important role that volunteers and third sector groups play as partners in delivering integrated care, Voluncaring is the the work or practice of volunteers or non-statutory organizations as partners in the delivery of health programs and services. Today’s volunteers are more diverse than ever – ranging from teenagers to retirees, coming from a variety of backgrounds and bringing a multitude of professional and life experiences. What they have in common is the desire to help others. In health services, volunteers are an often under-recognized or underutilized resource that can help to meet patient and family needs. The term Voluncaring reflects people’s motivations for volunteering, the care work that many volunteers do, and the benefits derived by patients, families, clinicians and organizations.
Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) challenges the traditional deficit-based approach that tries to solve urban and rural development problems by focusing on the needs and deficiencies of individuals, neighbourhoods, towns, villages, etc. ABCD demonstrates that local assets (people, physical assets etc.) and individual strengths are key to ensure sustainable community development, and that people have a life of their own choosing. Cormac Russell of Nurture Development will provide an overview of the ABCD approach and how a strengths-based approach can benefit integration care programs.
ICIC20 Virtual Conference
The ICIC20 Virtual Conference is a relaunch of the 20th International Conference on Integrated Care that was due to take place in Šibenik, Croatia in April. The new edition will take place as a virtual offer bringing over 150 hours of integrated care content presented through an innovative digital portal. IFIC is using an exciting new platform that allows a broad range of interactive experiences to rival any physical event. The ICIC20 Virtual Conference will allow connection from anywhere in the world, removing the cost and time associated barriers involved in attending the physical conference.
Oral presentations, workshops and the poster display have been redesigned across 4 themed days to take place Wednesday, 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th of September. Delegates can choose to attend all 4 conference days or select individual days to best suit diary and other commitments. All content from the conference days are available post event on demand.
Updates from the IFIC Ireland family
The Irish Platform for Patient Organisations, Science and Industry (IPPOSI) have launched a survey to map public and patient involvement (PPI) in research and healthcare in Ireland. If you are a researcher, healthcare worker, company or state agency who has involved the public or patients in your work, click here for more details and to complete the survey.
On Monday, 13 July from 13:00-14:15, IPPOSI will host the first in a series of online discussions around the future for public and patient involvement in healthcare in Ireland. A second online discussion will take place on 29 September. For more information and to register click here!
We would like to congratulate our Steering Group member, Jacqui Browne, on her appointment as chair of the newly established Coalition of Disabled Persons Organisations Ireland, an umbrella organisation for disabled persons organisations. The first task for the Coalition will be to prepare a Shadow Report on Ireland’s implementation of the actions contained within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Person with Disabilities.
Did you know IFIC has a Podcast?
IFIC launched their very first podcast series ‘Integrated Care Today’ a few months back, in March. In the first episode Prof. Áine Carroll, PJ Harnett and Prof. Anne Hendry talk to IFIC’s Orla Snook O’Carroll about their views on Integrated Care and what it means for them. The recent episodes have documented IFIC’s ‘Care during and beyond the COVID-19 Crisis’ webinar series.
You can now take IFIC with you on the go and listen anytime, any place!
#EndPJParalysis
#endPJParalysis Global Summit 2020 is taking place on July 9th and 10th next focussing on the impact of Covid-19 on both physical and psychological deconditioning across 3 key strands: Covid-19 recovery care; care implications following isolation and changes in care delivery; impact on staff wellbeing, leadership and change capacity.
You can register for the summit here, which also includes details on speakers and the programme.
