Theme 1. Population-based primary health care: planning and integration for the community
Learning Objectives
Participants will leave with a broader sense of what we mean by Health Equity. Full spectrum training in and operationalisation of Health Equity must include all parts of the BODY of Health Equity. Participants will learn the elements of each – Information – Attitude – Capacity-building – and how they intersect and complement one another, why one without the others is inadequate and its potential for profound system-wide impact.
Summary
The presentation will cover the elements of full-spectrum Health Equity, focussing on its present and potential impact on individuals, communities, on systems – and what kind of courage is needed to do so. It will be provide information and it will be interactive and fun!
- The HEAD of health equity is all about increasing our knowledge, open to and acquiring new information on best practices and applying it to the practice site environment. It’s about definitions, effective community engagement that never ends, rethinking Population Health Needs Assessments to take into account the social determinants of health, using its key concepts as the lens through which one does planning, asks questions, designs space, ensures accessibility (in every sense of that word); finding and recruiting the right staff and volunteers and ensuring their regular training in these concepts and applications as well as putting in place measures and mechanisms for open, transparent, safe communication, resolution of conflicts and team-building.
- The FEET of Health Equity institutionalises your commitment to health equity, providing monitoring and ongoing learning opportunities for improvement.
- The HEART moves beyond knowledge transfer to a focus on people and the encounters that make up our work-days: with our clients, our funders, our colleagues and ourselves – how we are with one another, our behaviours and the impacts of often unacknowledged social location and unrecognised privilege, cultural conditioning (on the part of both provider and client/ patient), unsurfaced attitudes, interests and motivations.
The HEART asks, “What are the internal and organisational dynamics, structures, policies/procedures, unwritten protocols, personal values, rank and privilege that have an impact, positive or otherwise, on effective people-centred care?” Training in the HEART of Health Equity also provides insight with respect to the architecture of space and the constructs and properties of power and stigma. Getting at the HEART drives passion for and interest in greater knowledge, skills and commitment to one’s part in the organisation’s goals and planning. Getting to the HEART is the indispensable ingredient. The IMPACT of this kind of full-spectrum operationalisation is huge, measurable both in traditional methods, checking off boxes, monitoring change, evaluating experience – and in the more subjective measurements that have to do with self- and other-awareness, one’s capacity to broach difficult conversations, to identify internal barriers to effective ‘encountering’ of all sorts, to communicate more effectively. To paraphrase Steven Lewis, ‘if we meant what we say about health equity, the very system itself would be turned inside out and upside down.’ It would move us to ask different questions:
- How would we communicate differently?
- How would we define performance and productivity differently?
- How would we train our providers differently?
- How would we use health information differently?
- How would we value time and
- What would we reward differently?
- How would we allocate resources differently?
Presenters
- Lee McKenna, Executive Director, Partera International