There are communities that nurture a cohesive culture by pulling people together on a regular basis to work together for the good of their community. It is this cohesive culture that inspires the Health Data Coalition (HDC) to work collectively with our partners and interest-holders to co-create and collaboratively deliver community-centric Adult Mental Health (AMH) learning sessions. This collaborative approach across organizations relies on community leadership and perspective to guide how the delivery of continuing professional development (CPD) can be rewarding, practical, and even enjoyable. The magic happens when multiple organizations, aligned with a shared purpose, join forces to connect, simplify support access, and provide local resources for primary care providers. Our recent work delivering AMH sessions to communities across BC reinforced how our organizations are well positioned to provide the ecosystem structure needed for collective impact.
Collective impact is defined as a group of interest-holders from different sectors, committing to a common agenda to address a broad complex social challenge[1]. The team involved in delivering the AMH learning program framed their engagement and education development on collective impact principles to facilitate sustainable collaborations with the aim of achieving relevant change to a shared primary care provider audience. To achieve collective impact, it was imperative to agree on a shared vision, plan of action with mutually reinforcing activities, and key indicators of success.
Collective impact requires community involvement, but relationship-building and peer-led activities were absent during the COVID 19 pandemic, which led to a deterioration of connectedness and greater sense of isolation for providers and their teams. With that knowledge, our intentional approach in this learning program was to reduce isolation and build community cohesion through dialogue and peer connection.
This project’s collaborating partners (UBC Continuing Professional Development, Health Data Coalition, Practice Support Program (PSP)) and interest-holders (Pathways BC, and Divisions of Family Practice) came together to create a safe and supportive environment for a mental health educational session. The primary goal of this initiative is to create a model where the collaborating partners leverage their respective strengths to create a structure to deliver community-focused educational sessions. By working together, each collaboration partner and interest-holder understands their role, potential hand-offs, and subsequent engagement activities.
Offer the Community Choice
As a foundational kick-off activity, the collaborating partners engage with a Divisions of Family Practice and community physician facilitators to gather their input and case study selection. Once a case study is selected, learners are provided with unique, multi-modal learning opportunities, including an online module and in-person learning session. These learning activities are framed with a quality improvement lens to focus on a specific clinical topic (i.e. mental health prevalence, potential differential diagnoses and co-morbidities).
Empower and support local leaders
Each learning session extends beyond the standard curriculum through the engagement of regional care providers as facilitators. Rather than relying on subject matter experts traveling between communities, local providers undergo training with seasoned facilitators. This approach allows the local providers to refine their own skills and deliver sessions in a manner that is comfortable, authentic, and resonates within their community. This “train the trainer” methodology further empowers facilitators to model these essential “soft” skills to their peers and colleagues.
While this approach takes longer at the initiation stage, the efficiencies are apparent with subsequent sessions, as each community finds their own rhythm and participants become more familiar with the structure. 95% of survey respondents agreed that a local peer facilitator made the session much more relevant to community concerns and nuances. The learners were keen to recommend the program to their peers and there were requests for additional follow-up sessions, hosted in a similar format. This reinforces the importance of community input to inform collaborating partners, who create the structure and support for learning events.
Local facilitators also help design the overall structure of the session, to maximize attendee connection and to set the session’s tone. The session opens with round-table introductions, often asking what the learner hopes to take away from the session. The facilitators also promise an end time, so that attendees know their time is valued. This is part of our overarching ‘soft start, hard stop’ philosophy, that has been well received across all communities.
By starting with attendee connection, the overall culture of the sessions is open, friendly and not rushed. This comradery and engagement continues easily amongst the attendees. For example, the inclusion of community specialists enables immediate feedback and validation to support the primary care providers’ concerns and questions, without the formal referral workflow of everyday practice.
Localize Learning Content and Support
The introduction to community data, in the context of the selected case, stimulates the curiosity of participants and empowers them to lead their own quality improvement activities. Use of community data is remarkably effective in increasing attendee awareness of community needs outside of their individual practices and linking them to this data for quality improvement purposes. By providing relevant data, coupled with evidenced informed education for improvement, communities can be intentional in integrating appropriate quality improvements that align with gaps relevant to their own circumstances.
In addition, the orientation to mental health resources within Pathways BC, provides actionable takeaways for learners who are motivated to incorporate relevant patient handouts and tools within their own practice. By supporting primary care providers to learn in the context of their community’s health profile, we increase engagement and personalized learning.
At the end of the session, both PSP Practice Improvement coaches and the HDC Clinical Services team introduce post-session practice supports to the learners. To continue engagement with each attendee, facilitators schedule a follow-up session to review learnings, individual mental health measures within the HDC Discover application, and potential quality improvement plans. This provides the attendee time to digest the case and group discussion, potentially start using Pathway BC tools and consider how to implement their change idea.
What’s the next topic?
The collaboration demonstrates how strategic partnerships and thoughtful coordination can nurture community cohesion, with the larger goal to drive more effective healthcare delivery across a community. Inspired by communities where we have delivered multiple sessions, the collaborating partners are keen to continue this momentum and provide the same supportive services, with different clinical topics, every 6-9 months to build and maintain community cohesion. The partners are working collectively to co-create and collaboratively deliver a Child and Youth Mental Health set of learning sessions next.
Have another topic in mind? We would love to hear from you about your community’s interests or needs.
Please contact HDC’s Clinical Services Team for more information.
[1] Collective Impact, John Kania and Mark Kramer, Stanford Social Innovation Review (Winter 2011)