NACIC2021 – A conference remembered for deep patient and care giver involvement
What a great week of learning we have experienced through #NACIC2021 the 1st North American Conference on Integrated Care. This conference will be remembered for the deep patient and care-giver involvement with 300 patient and care-giver attendees. This has enriched the learning experience for all those involved in the design and delivery of integrated care and underlines the importance of a co-design approach in all that we do to achieve more co-ordinated and person-centred care. We are grateful for our supporters HSO / Accreditation Canada who enabled us to do include patient and care givers at this scale.
The virtual conference format has also enabled us to be more inclusive, including those who for many reasons are unable to travel to our physical conferences and we hope to maintain this through future hybrid conferences.
This conference that ran over 4 days included 9 poster walks, 15 pre-conference sessions and over 40 concurrent presentation sessions and workshops supported by pre-recorded video presentations all led and facilitated by an army of chairs to whom we extend a sincere thank you – our network of volunteers are an essential part of what makes our conferences so exceptional.
If you haven’t been able to catch up on all the pre-recorded presentations or would like to catch up on sessions you could not attend this week, remember that delegates can access the content for 3 months. After this we will add all the learning content to our knowledge tree on the Foundation’s website. For those who weren’t able to attend all the plenaries which included an array of talented and thought provoking keynote presentations and panel discussions are available to watch via our website.
This conference has been so timely for us at the Foundation. Not only is this a very exciting time for integrated care in Canada – the passion and enthusiasm we have witnessed here this week makes that very clear – but it reinforces the messages that we have highlighted in our newly published strategy. You can find Our Strategy 2022 – 2026 – Accelerating the Movement for Change on our website and we hope that our network can support us as we accelerate the movement for integrated care worldwide over the next 5 years.
All of the submitted papers from this conference will be published too in a future issue of the International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC), our high profile scientific journal which has doubled its impact factor in the last two years.
A warm congratulations to the winners of our Awards. We were delighted to include a new Patient and Care Giver Engagement Award series at this year’s conference which we plan to include into the future.
The Patient and Care Giver Engagement Award presented two Runner Up prizes to paper 44 Improved partnerships between caregivers and care providers of persons living with dementia, presented by Paul Holyoke, SE Research Centre, SE Health and to paper 149 Nurturing Resilient and Compassionate Communities in Scotland presented by Mandy Andrew, Health And Social Care Alliance Scotland.
The Patient and Care Giver Engagement Overall Winner was presented to paper 40 Co-designing a Child and Family Hub for family adversity in Australia: lessons learned presented by Teresa Hall, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Australia.
Best Poster went to paper 191 Understanding Your Integration Journey: Overview and Lessons Learned from HSO’s Integrated Care Assessment Tool Presented by Samantha Laxton, Health Standards Organisation.
The Integrated Care Runner Up prize went to paper 131 Patient and Caregiver Handbook in the Oxford and Area Ontario Health Team which was presented by Mark Weir, Woodstock Hospital
And the Overall Winner of the IFIC Integrated Care Award went to paper 152 One of the Team – Person-Centred Integrated Care, presented by Helen Tucker, Patient Advisor, Community Hospitals UK.
Congratulations to you all, you should be very proud of your contribution to the field of integrated care and moving forward the movement for change.
Our conferences are still the anchor of our work. They provide participants in our movement for change with a chance to meet, share knowledge and experience, generate new ideas, innovate and have some fun! It has been 2 ½ years since we last met face to face in San Sebastian which is still difficult to believe but we so looking forward to being together again in Odense in Denmark in May 2022 and hope to see as many of you as possible there. For those who cannot come in person, our hybrid conference design will emphasise inclusion especially of patients and care-givers.
The call for abstracts has been extended to 30 November and we have heard many presentations at this conference that we would love to get an update about next year – so please do submit!
Thank you again to our hosts Jodeme Goldhar, Walter Wodchis, Ross Baker, Carole Ann Alloway, Philiz Goh and Elizabeth Tay and to KPMG Canada for their support throughout the planning period. To our principle partners HSO/Accreditation Canada and CBI Health and to all our supporters including Ontario Spor Support Unit, Bayshore Healthcare, SE Health, NexJ Health University of Madavie and to our extensive list of knowledge partners, thank you – without your involvement a conference of this scale simply couldn’t happen. A big thank you to Sally and her team at Face2Face events and to all our team here at the Foundation. Congratulations on your hard work and dedication.
And finally thank you to all our delegates – your energy and engagement is what makes these conferences successful. If you have not been to one of our events before – welcome to the movement!
See you in Denmark!
Dr Niamh Lennox-Chhugani
Chief Executive
International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC)