Communities Driving Innovation
Putting information and tools in the hands of ambassadors to support their communities
4 min read
The Challenge
As we have seen time and again, there is a gap between Ontario’s standard health care offering and the needs of many of the people it is meant to serve, particularly those in the province’s racialized, low income and marginalized communities. The extent of the gap was brought into sharp focus during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw these communities disproportionately impacted, but the gap is not limited to the pandemic. There are long-standing structural forces at work that create the conditions that negatively impact these communities, and the approaches the system has used in the past simply aren’t sufficient on their own to address them.
The Why
Ontario’s racialized, low income and marginalized communities need bespoke health care offerings that the system is not currently set up to provide. Through our experience working with Community Ambassadors as part of our efforts to support the system’s COVID-19 response in these communities (High Priority Communities, Hear to There), Health Commons Solutions Lab has seen first-hand the positive impact these Ambassadors can have. We believe Community Ambassadors have a critical role to play in helping design programs and policies that truly reflect the priorities and needs of the populations they’re meant to serve, ensuring the relevancy of health care service and support offerings—and helping to close the gaps in access and equity. Community Ambassadors play a critical role in effective outreach, connecting with community members through a shared understanding of what is culturally relevant, local priorities and what interventions are most meaningful to the community that they are a part of.
The Approach
Community Ambassadors are a conduit that help us to understand what's happening in the community, and the pandemic provided an excellent example of how that could work on the ground.
During the pandemic, Health Commons Solutions Lab supported Ambassadors to go out into communities and talk to people to gain an understanding of what their major access challenges were and what questions they had about COVID, about testing, and about the vaccines. Community Ambassadors were also instrumental in helping us bring together focus groups around particular topics and even helped train medical students around topics like cultural sensitivities, appropriate language, and effective messaging.
The insights gained from these outreach efforts were crucial to shaping our communications and also helped to inform decision-makers about what health system policies needed to do in order to better serve people's needs.
The Outcome
An active, engaged network of trained Community Ambassadors has been created that can be deployed to help community partners and the health system to address a range of challenges to delivering health care to those most impacted by the social determinants of health. As well, Health Commons Solutions Lab has built a repository of tools and training materials that can be leveraged to empower more Community Ambassadors in different communities across the province, or adapted to train existing Ambassadors to help health system partners address different or emerging health care challenges.
Looking Ahead
Community Ambassadors have been building relationships and trust with community members since January 2021 (and even earlier for many organizations). With their effectiveness proven by the impact they had during the pandemic, we now have an opportunity to extend the reach of the Community Ambassadors into other areas of health promotion, leveraging their expertise to help reach populations and engage them earlier in care when they can be more effective in changing outcomes.
There is a shift underway towards viewing Community Ambassadors as a meaningful intervention, one that can play an integral role in helping improve access to primary care. No other healthcare or allied health professional does what Community Ambassadors do, going door to door in a community to talk to people in order to understand the health care interventions that will bring them the greatest benefit.
With our experience, Health Commons Solutions Lab is uniquely positioned to support people with lived experience and empower them to help their communities, and this work is aligned with our value of involving end-users in the design and testing of solutions that affect their experience and health outcomes and determine the best way forward.
We are continuing to actively engage with Community Ambassadors through regular meetings and see a role for Health Commons Solutions Lab in helping the system to understand the value of embedding Community Ambassadors into its efforts, as well as providing ongoing training and support to Ambassadors to take on expanded roles.