A strong primary care sector is critical to the health of populations and the success of the health care system overall. This system success depends substantially on a strong degree of trust from the community. The pressures of the pandemic have exacerbated the issues in primary care–and as primary care struggles, the downstream impacts are significant and costly for people and providers. As Ontario starts moving from COVID response to COVID recovery, we need to be proactively looking for ways to bolster an already overburdened sector that’s been hit by a shortage of family doctors. But how, when the same resource pressures continue to exist? Community Ambassadors can help.

With community voice and lived experience as a foundation, one of the projects we undertook for ourselves recently was the creation of a Theory of Change that both articulates our approach to the work we do and serves as a touchstone for this work going forward. Read it here!

Researchers of systemic and structural drivers of health have long been advocating for the collection of race-based and socio-demographic data in Canada to be able to better understand disparate health outcomes and barriers to equitable care at the population-level. Sociodemographic data collection is an important tool in challenging inequity linked to systemic racism, discrimination, and income inequality. Disaggregated data is considered vital for identifying disparities, monitoring the impact of interventions and advocating for policy change. It’s important that community members play an active role in this data collection.

Published by Priya Iyer for TVO

Published on Healthy Debate by Sophia Ikura, Kate Mulligan, and Safia Ahmed

Through the research and design process, we gained a better understanding of the importance of peer workers in different care settings and, in turn, helped the peer team better understand and support their clients. Peer workers’ human-centred, direct, relationship-based approach to daily care aligns closely with our research strategy. As a result, we were able to enhance the valuable work of peers and support their client-centred, needs-based approach through a client journey map and welcome letter tool.

Published in Healthy Debate by Sophia Ikura and Dr. Jasmine Pawa

Don’t ignore the other curves that need to be flattened — unemployment, food insecurity, poor mental health, and housing instability

In November 2019, Health Commons Solutions Lab was invited to lead a workshop at the Transforming Care Conference, SickKids Hospital’s annual innovation event. This was an opportunity to share some of the key learnings we’ve developed with the Neighbours initiative, including the power of building trust for better health outcomes and care. Here we explore how deep listening is essential to establish trust.