Addressing the social determinants of health that underlie pervasive and damaging health inequities is a complex and dynamic challenge — a classic ‘wicked’ policy problem. There is a clear consensus that effective action cannot be organized issue by issue, or silo by silo, but must be collaborative. This means on the ground through coordinating public health, primary care, settlements services and many other community agencies and interventions; at a community level to bring residents and community, service provider, governments, labour, business and a wide range of stakeholders together to address complex challenges such as poverty reduction and to work together to build the foundations of healthier communities — at best through comprehensive community initiatives; and at a policy level to ensure concerted and coordinated policy attention across local, provincial/territorial and federal governments and the myriad of departments and agencies within each governments, all to tackle the fundamental determinants of health and structured social and economic inequality. Wellesley research has examined the success conditions for effective collaboration.
Health Evidence in partnership with the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health will be hosting a 90 minute webinar funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health, presenting key messages and implications for practice in the area of social determinants of health on Wednesday September 19, 2012 at 1:00 pm EST. This webinar will focus on interpreting the evidence in the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health’s review: Assessing the impact and effectiveness of intersectoral action on the social determinants of health: An expedited systematic review. To register for the webinar.
The NCCDH has also enabled a very valuable virtual community of practice where public health and other practitioners, researchers and equity advocates can discuss such complex challenges. A discussion thread on Health Equity Clicks: Community is available for any advance questions for the Webinar. Could one question be developing a better term than “intersectoral collaboration”?