The Framework

As we continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Office of the Chief Medical Health Officer (OCMHO) is building its capacity to improve the determinants of health in VCH communities. Across the VCH region, BCCDC public data shows negative health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic linked to the determinants of health that our teams have worked to address for many years. We have learned that effectively tackling these determinants requires a collaborative, cross-departmental approach, and the OCMHO aims to enhance its ability to collaborate across teams with a new framework– the Community Wellbeing Collaborative Framework (The Framework).

The Framework, co-created by Population Health, Prevention Services, and Health Protection with support from the Deputy Chief Medical Health Officer, aims to revitalize and reaffirm health promotion work as a core area of practice within the mandate of the Office of the Chief MHO. All three programs along with medical health officers engage in various forms of policy research, analysis, advocacy, and monitoring concerned with upstream, preventative, and protective interventions to improve community health and prevent strain on healthcare delivery. Shifts in population health over the course of the pandemic have reaffirmed the need to invest in resources to enhance public health’s capacity to influence healthy public policies and programming that address issues such as mental health, social isolation and loneliness, food insecurity, substance misuse, and physical inactivity. This new framework provides a clear structure for mobilizing those resources and serves to identify the:

· Right connections. Facilitate more effective collaboration and coordination between teams in the Office of the Chief Medical Health Officer, and better management of external partnerships.

· Right dose. Identify needs and ensure that investment and resources match these needs.

· Right practice. Improve role clarity, develop practitioners’ skillsets, and support the development of a practice model that prioritizes data & evidence-informed interventions.

The Framework is based on a “Hub and Spoke” conceptual model that seeks to enhance the ability of regional staff and those in communities of care (COCs) to collaborate and advance a shared strategic vision for health promotion and healthy public policy. New positions will be created in the hub to strengthen public health’s ability to monitor, analyze, strategically plan, engage, communicate, and coordinate across the region, and in COCs to ensure that VCH is engaged in the key settings and sectors where it can positively influence the policies and support interventions that shape the environments and experiences constituting the determinants of health. The framework will utilize a variety of mechanisms, innovative tools, and practices (including project management software and improved inter-departmental communications) to ensure that all teams are able to participate effectively in consultation and action on the determinants of health.