At the end of September, Interim CEO Toni Dedeu and senior researchers Nieves Ehrenberg and Monica Sorensen will travel to Vancouver, Canada to the 3rd Transnational Forum for Integrated Community Care (TransForm) conference. IFIC is the content partner of this joint initiative of Foundations in Europe and Canada that aims to put the community at the centre of primary and integrated care.
The goals of the conference, entitled Building stronger communities through Integrated Community Care are to:
1. Demonstrate the positive impact community engagement and empowerment can have on improving people’s health and wellbeing
2. Understand the options and processes by which local communities by local decision-making can support the creation and maintenance of new forms of partnerships and alliances between formal and informal sectors
3. Explore how to mobilise policy makers and community leaders to take the lead towards system transformation through community-led collaborative approaches
4. Demonstrate how evaluation and research can support the design and deployment of community-based approaches that enable ICC
IFIC has been closely involved in developing the conference program, engaging inspirational speakers, ranging from Ministers to local innovators in integrated community care and preparing all background documents. The program also includes visits to a range of sites that have managed to improve the lives of people in the greater Vancouver area. Two of them are Foundry and Vancouver Native Health Society:
- Foundry targets young people aged 12-24 and provides a one-stop-shop for integrated mental health care, substance use services, primary care, social services and youth and family peer support; and
- Vancouver Native Health Society (VNHS) delivers comprehensive medical and social services to the Indigenous community of Greater Vancouver founded on traditional Indigenous knowledge and methodologies.
The conference, taking place from October 2nd to October 4th, will kick off with an Indigenous Territory Acknowledgement and throughout the three days, citizen and community leaders will weave into discussions, ensuring that citizens’ critical role in service design and delivery is at the forefront.
TransForm’s ambitions are very much at the heart of IFIC’s own mission and values. It provides special relevance on how non-institutional approaches to care through coordinated efforts between the formal and informal sectors can better empower and engage people and populations in their health. The project recognizes that integrated community care should be driven by goals-based and person-centred strategies to help empower people and help improve both the quality of care and quality of life of citizens, patients, service users, carers and families. This requires the coming together of a range of care partners to better plan, deliver and co-ordinate services to people and populations and the development of new forms of inter-professional and inter-agency collaborations across diverse contexts and settings. Whilst integrated community care is relevant to any person or group who would benefit from such support, this type of approach to care co-ordination at the community-level has specific advantages to the most vulnerable in society.
Monica Sorensen
Senior Researcher
The International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC)