ICIC25 Conference Themes
Integrated care is not an isolated research, policy and practice agenda but one which is firmly grounded in wider discussions and global efforts that affect all areas of health and wellbeing. ICIC25 is an invitation to the integrated care movement to reflect upon our contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) developed by the United Nations (UN) in 2015, as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We believe that integrated care is instrumental in achieving these goals, making health and wellbeing achievable across the whole life course, and remembering that reducing inequalities, promoting healthy and sustainable habitats is all our responsibility.
So, after twenty-five years of the International Conference on Integrated Care and ten years into the launch of the SDGs, the Conference in Lisbon in May 2025 will be an opportunity to reflect on the contribution made by integrated care to this urgent call for sustainable action around the world.
We have chosen 4 themes where SDGs and integrated care are explicitly linked, and welcome abstracts that help the integrated care movement to deepen and widen our discussions by reflecting upon these themes. And in particular, we call for papers from diverse professional profiles, people and communities with lived experience, other public sector bodies and geographies, particularly low- and middle-income countries who have been most impacted and can share their learning with the international integrated care community. The conference will accept papers representing all parts of the health and care system, acute, secondary, primary and community, including good examples from governance, system design, implementation, workforce, finance, digital, community and patient experience perspectives.
1. Healthy All Around: Integrated Care Strategies for Universal Health Coverage
SDG 3 Good Health and Wellbeing is about ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages. This aligns with an integrated care that takes a holistic approach to health that goes beyond the absence of disease. One of its key targets is achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). UHC “means that all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. It covers the full continuum of essential health services, from health promotion to prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care across the life course” (WHO).
Within this theme, we welcome the following types of papers:
- Initiatives that support person and people-centred care
- Examples of preventative and pro-active approaches to health and wellbeing improvements
- New models of care to ensure access to the right services, at the right time in the right place
- Health and care services delivered across the life course and across diseases and conditions and social care needs
- Care coordination and care continuity between care settings
- Initiatives that include enabling technology and digital health innovations
- Payment systems to support Universal Health Coverage and integration of care
- Examples of integration of health and social services to support Universal Health Coverage
- Examples of working effectively across cultures, demonstrating competencies to work with people and teams from diverse backgrounds
- Examples of integrated approaches to supporting long-term care, particularly for people with multiple, chronic conditions
- Care pathway examples that support an integrated plan for how, when and where care is delivered, demonstrating improved experience and reduction in intensity of care intervention
- Innovations in home-based care, where care that might traditionally be provided in a hospital or clinic setting and is now provided in a person’s home
- Examples of using PROMs/PREMs and other tools to measure results of integrated care and how people have perceived their treatment
- Examples of building knowledge and evidence to support integrated care, including embedding the evaluation process at all levels of design and delivery
- Examples of supporting healthy communities, thinking about social prescribing, mental health and wellbeing and self-management, particularly for those who are least able to support themselves
- Complex care systems, learning health systems as mechanisms to advance integrated care
- Initiatives that are taking a value-based approach to provide better value for patients, communities and health and care systems
- Examples of innovation from Palliative and End of Life Care
2. Collaborative Approaches in Integrated Care: Leveraging Partnerships for Health and Development
SDG 17 Strengthening the means of implementation and revitalizing Global Partnership for Sustainable Development. Being the last one of the SDG list, the message is that the agenda conveyed by the other SDGs will not be fulfilled without multi-stakeholder collaboration and enhanced cooperation.
The UN’s SDG Partnership Guidebook describes multi-stakeholder partnership for the SDGs as “an ongoing collaborative relationship among organisations from different stakeholder types aligning their interests around a common vision, combining their complementary resources and competencies and sharing risk, to maximise value creation towards the Sustainable Development Goals and deliver benefit to each of the partners.” Integrated care provides a way to forge multi-disciplinary, and integrative approaches to build partnerships between patients, care professionals, communities and organisations and foster sustainable development.
Within this theme, we welcome the following types of papers:
- Examples of care design and delivery that is co-produced with patients, caregivers and communities
- Community-driven health initiatives that use community planning tools and frameworks involving local assets, community expertise and networks to support better collaboration with local government and other community partners
- Examples from health and care approaches, where key principles of good interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary working are embedded, and demonstrate how learning can be used in other areas, particularly around developing new models of integrated care
- Examples of training and support for clinicians and other professional profiles to work with and alongside communities to promote partnerships for integrated care
- Collaborative initiatives that demonstrate coordination and alignment across multiple sectors including health, social care, education, transport, policing and social protection
- Examples of digitally enabled multidisciplinary teamwork enabling enhanced care coordination, improving experience for workforce and receivers of care
- Examples of good governance, accountability and regulatory best practice to support integrated care
- Leadership for integrated care, including examples of distributive and supportive leadership – how organisations are building leadership capabilities across the system and at all levels
- Whole-system reforms examples including transferable lessons for other regions
3. Inclusive Health: Integrated Care to Reduce Inequality Within and Among Countries
SDG 10 aims to reduce inequality within and among countries. Inequality threatens long-term social and economic development, harms poverty reduction and destroys people’s sense of fulfilment and self-worth. This connects with an increasingly important area within the integrated care movement, which we have gradually been exploring in past conferences: the importance of inclusive health and population health approaches to supporting access to care, experience of care, and better outcomes.
Within this theme, we welcome the following types of papers:
- Examples of integrated care models that take a human-rights and inclusive health approach that recognise the impact of structural determinants of health and inequity
- Examples of care services that are targeted at underserved populations thinking about priority populations, including forceable displaced populations, indigenous communities, people experiencing homelessness, people with visible and invisible disability, ethnic and religious minorities, people of colour, transgender, women and children, older people and others with individual access needs
- Examples of integrated care models specifically for areas of socio-economic disadvantage, deprived neighbourhoods and remote and rural areas
- Integrated care to promote gender equality, ensuring participation and leadership opportunities at all levels of decision-making, ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, reforms to ensure equal access to resources and the enhancement of enabling technology to promote the empowerment of women
- Examples of experience-driven, outcomes-based approaches to measuring and evaluating integrated care that involves the inclusion of patient, caregiver and community voice in designing measurement and evaluation tools
- Examples of evidence-based decision-making tools and frameworks for policy making and health systems management
- Digital health equity related initiatives to improve the quality of life of rural and remote areas population, particularly those living with chronic conditions and their carers
- Healthcare literacy initiatives that provide access to knowledge, improve ability to access health and care services, self-management, and empower individuals to engage more effectively with healthcare professionals and their own care
4. Healthy and sustainable habitats: integrated care against climate change
SDG 11 “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and SDG 13 “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impact” brings the role of integrated care to the centre of this important global conversation. This last theme is novel and groundbreaking for the integrated care field. It acknowledges the impact of integrated health and care services on environmental resources, and how health and care systems play an important role in tackling climate change by taking sustainability as a consideration in the how care is organised and delivered.
Within this theme, we welcome the following types of papers:
- Examples of making the connection between One Health “the collaborative efforts of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally, to attain optimal health for people, animals and our environment” and integrated care approaches
- Demonstrations of regions that are building sustainable health cities and resilient communities through integrated care
- Examples of regions that are taking a public health perspective in urban planning and are taking a whole city approach to health and wellbeing of the population
- Integrated care initiatives that are considering the impact of decisions that will impact the environment in how health and social care services are working together more sustainably
- The use of digital health tools to reduce negative impact on the environment, including addressing the impact of digital waste and unnecessary storage of data
- Strategies and innovations in integrating emergency and other auxiliary services with broader care systems during emergencies and climate crises
- Education and training initiatives for building workforce capabilities to support environmentally friendly approaches to designing and delivering care, and examples of taking a more sustainable approach to workforce planning
- Demonstrating efficient use of resources to sustain integrated and longer-term care, including scaling up examples that embed efficiencies of scale
- Using population health approaches to better understand data to organise care and provide efficiencies and sustainability, including consideration of data safety and security
- Examples of societal cost-benefit analysis of health care and social welfare initiatives
- Innovations in implementation of integrated care that support effective organisation of care across multiple agencies, avoiding overlap and supporting reduction in environmental harm