Refining Program Theory for a Place-Based Integrated Care Initiative in Sydney, Australia

A number of families living in our community experience many barriers to accessing health and social care. The problems that these families face are highly complex, often spanning over generations, and cannot be addressed by one agency alone.  The Healthy Homes and Neighbourhoods (HHAN) Integrated Care Initiative attempts to connect services to address these barriers, and ensure families have their complex health and social needs met; keep themselves and their children safe; and keep families connected to society.

This article shows that in addition to serving families in Sydney, HHAN has also established place-based initiatives (PBI) in disadvantaged areas such ...

A critical realist evaluation of an integrated care project for vulnerable families in Sydney, Australia

Healthy Homes and Neighbourhoods (HHAN) Integrated Care Initiative was established to improve the care of families with complex health and social needs who reside in Sydney Local Health District. HHAN seeks to provide long-term multi-disciplinary care coordination as well as enhance capacity building and promote integrated care. Findings of this study supported the initial programme theory that engagement and trust building with clients, alongside enhanced collaboration and integration of services, improved outcomes for vulnerable families with complex needs.

Understanding Young People and Their Care Providers’ Perceptions and Experiences of Integrated Care Within a Tertiary Paediatric Hospital Setting, Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis

Benefits of integrated care include improved health outcomes and more satisfaction with experiences of care for consumers. For children and young people with chronic and complex health conditions, their care may be fragmented due to the multitude of healthcare providers involved. This paper describes the experiences of integrated care in a paediatric tertiary hospital.

Integrated ambulatory care in the New Zealand health system: a scoping review

Integrated health systems, according to the World Health Organization (2017) are ''the organization and management of health services so that people get the care they need, when they need it, in ways that are user-friendly, achieve the desired results and provide value for money.'' This is a very important concept in today's day and age, as access to healthcare has become a challenge and the population has never been sicker.

In New Zealand and internationally, emerging trends across health systems include a fundamental shift of care from hospitals to community-based settings and increased integration of services to better link ...

Analysis of integrated health referral systems in the era of regional autonomy in West Sulawesi

According to WHO, Indonesia is committed to end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases by 2030. Emerging and re-emerging communicable diseases place immense strain on health systems, so concerted efforts are required to respond rapidly to urgent needs and to strengthen the development of effective disease control programmes including zoonotic diseases. It has been realized that while emphasizing improved access to services, equal attention also needs to be given to ensure quality, comprehensive and integrated health services for women, children and adolescents. Nutrition, a critical common factor ...

Health workforce planning under conditions of uncertainty: identifying supportive integrated care policies using scenario analysis

Integrated care presents health workforce planners with significant uncertainty. This results from:

• (1) these workforces are likely in the future to be different from the present.
• (2) integrated care's variable definitions.
• (3) workforce policy and planning is not familiar with addressing such challenges.

One means to deal with uncertainty is scenario analysis. In this study shows some aspects of integration-supportive workforce governance and planning policies that were derived from the application of scenario analysis.Through a mixed methods design that applies content analysis, scenario construction and the policy Delphi method, it's analized a set of New Zealand's ...

Quantitative evaluation of an outreach case management model of care for urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults living with complex chronic disease: a longitudinal study

Chronic diseases are the leading contributor to the excess morbidity and mortality burden experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter, respectfully, Indigenous) people, compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. The Home-based Outreach case Management of chronic disease Exploratory (HOME) Study provided person-centred, multidisciplinary care for Indigenous people with chronic disease. This model of care, aligned to Indigenous peoples’ conceptions of health and wellbeing, was integrated within an urban Indigenous primary health care service.

Connecting communities to primary care: a qualitative study on the roles, motivations and lived experiences of community health workers in the Philippines

Community health workers (CHWs) are an important cadre of the primary health care (PHC) workforce in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Philippines was an early adopter of the CHW model for the delivery of PHC. This study aims to address this gap by examining the lived experiences and roles of BHWs in urban and rural sites in the Philippines.

Realising the value of integrated care in Australia beyond

PROFESSOR NICK GOODWIN, Director, Central Coast Research Institute for Integrated Care, University of Newcastle and Central Coast LHD. Co-Founder, International Foundation for Integrated Care

Over the past decade there has been a growing realisation of the need to reform health and care systems in Australia to better coordinate care, improve quality and promote value.

For example, recent reports such as the 2017 Productivity Commission’s Shifting the Dial and the 2018 CSIRO report Future of Health criticised the existing disease-based, episodic, medicallydominated and institutionally- led characteristics of the Australian health system as being unable to respond effectively to the new ...

Community health alliances as social enterprises that digitally engage citizens and integrate services: A case study in Southwestern Sydney (protocol)

Community health alliances (CHAs) are a population health approach for addressing the challenges faced by people who are united by a common area of residence, sociocultural characteristic or health need, and are generally characterised by a shared mission, shared resource needs and the task of acquiring/developing necessary organisational knowledge and skills. In South Western Sydney, CHAs are being explored as an innovative approach to support the provision of integrated health services. 

Much of the population live in local government areas with levels of disadvantage higher than the state average, with a predominance of non-communicable and chronic diseases that are ...