Your Biweekly News & Updates
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Register now – AFHTO election advocacy webinars
With a provincial election now underway, this is a crucial time to advocate for team-based primary care and ensure its value is recognized by candidates of all political parties. To support you in these efforts, AFHTO is hosting two election advocacy webinars designed to equip members with practical strategies and resources. Even more important, we want to ensure a well aligned and coordinated approach as One Team /One Voice.
These webinars will introduce AFHTO’s Election Advocacy Toolkit, developed in collaboration with Santis Health, and provide guidance and support skills on how to engage effectively with provincial candidates and other stakeholders.
Webinar 1: Election Advocacy for Leadership (Triad Members Only)
- Date: February 10, 12:00 – 1:00 PM
- Register Here
- For Executive Directors, Board Chairs, Physician Leads and NP Leads. This session will focus on high-level election engagement strategies and an overview of the toolkit as well as how to best leverage team members.
Webinar 2: Election Advocacy for All Team Members
- Date: February 12, 1:00 – 2:00 PM
- Register Here
- Open to all members (IHPS, admin staff, physicians, etc.) of AFHTO member organizations. This session will cover similar content as the first webinar but tailored for a broader audience. It will also be recorded for those unable to attend.
We encourage all members to participate and take advantage of this opportunity to be election-ready.
Corporate and Financial Records webinar materials available
On Jan. 22 we held the first in our winter webinar series with INQ Law, Information and Data Retention Part 1: Corporate and Financial Records. Slides and video are now available here.
Member stories
Central Lambton and Rapids FHTs- continued funding announced for urban and rural access to care centres
Hamilton FHT- ambitious plan to fill the family doctor gap announced on the eve of Ontario election
Manitoulin Central FHT– The $250-an-hour Band-Aid: How this rural northeastern Ontario hospital keeps its emergency room open
News and updates including primary care in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond
- Primary care in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond: lessons from Ontario– Canadian Family Physician January 2025
- CEP’s latest clinical tools:
- SARS-CoV-2 infection association with atherosclerotic plaque progression at coronary CT angiography and adverse cardiovascular events– Radiology, Feb. 4, 2025
- The Health Impacts of a Pension – HOOPP, Feb. 6, 2025
Learn how to integrate equity-oriented strategies into your primary care conversations
“Creating Safe Connections is a FREE e-learning course that teaches primary care providers how to integrate equity-oriented, trauma- and violence-informed care strategies into primary care conversations.
You can apply these principles to address barriers and risks associated with accessing and using health services. The course uses lung cancer screening and smoking cessation as case examples to learn and apply these strategies.
Creating Safe Connections is available to all primary care providers, and family physicians are able to register for 4 CME accredited hours.
Register and take the course now.”
Ontario Health news: insomnia disorder quality standard, cancer system quality index and cancer survivorship quality standard advisory committee open call
- New quality standard on insomnia disorder
- Cancer System Quality Index (CSQI) 2024 released- Ontario Health has released the results of the Cancer System Quality Index (CSQI) 2024, an insightful report from the Cancer Quality Council of Ontario. This year, the CSQI focuses on melanoma, reporting on indicators spanning the care continuum from diagnosis to survivorship and end-of-life. This marks the first reporting on quality and outcome indicators for melanoma care in Ontario, establishing a baseline for future comparisons.
- Cancer survivorship quality standard advisory committee open call– deadline Feb. 14, 2025
Seeking medicine, nursing, and social work students to evaluate sexual health course
“The Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) has created an engaging, evidence-based online course to improve care in sexual health, and we need your help! We are recruiting medicine, nursing, and social work students for a study to evaluate the course and inform future updates. It’s a chance for us, with your support, to lead the way in making healthcare more inclusive and understanding around sexual health, substance use and sexually transmitted and blood borne infections (STBBI).
Why It Matters: Stigma, in all its forms (internalized, systemic, by association) is a big hurdle in sexual health care. Our course, crafted by experts and with real-life stories, has already reached hundreds. Now, we’re taking the next step, evaluating its impact with a study supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.”
Please share this opportunity with students and others in your network that can help reach eligible students from now until mid-February 2025. The recruitment poster is available here.
Questions? Please reach out to Brandon Hey (bhey@cpha.ca).
New cervical screening test in Ontario
On March 3, 2025, Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario) will be introducing the human papillomavirus (HPV) test which will replace cytology as the primary test for cervical screening and will also be used for follow-up testing in colposcopy in the Ontario Cervical Screening Program (OCSP).
Resources have been developed to help you prepare for this change: ontariohealth.ca/hpvhub.
Ontario Health will be offering webinars for:
Cervical screening:
Colposcopy:
If you have any questions, please contact Ontario Health at 1.866.662.9233 or cancerinfo@ontariohealth.ca.
Epilepsy Care Essentials: Case Conversations Dinner & Learning Event, Feb. 12, 2025
Free event hosted by ECHO Epilepsy Ontario in London. Register here.
Lunch and Learn webinar series with INQ Law, Feb. 26 & Mar.6, 2025
February 26, 2025: PHIPA and Patient Records Retention
March 6, 2025: Governance 101 Update and Refresh
Call for abstracts, 2025 NPAO Annual Conference
Deadline March 28, 2025. Find out more.