My time with the NCCDH & the Ontario public health community
Written by Linda Chan, Master of Public Health (MPH) Student at the University of Toronto (Health Promotion Specialization)
The National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health (NCCDH) kicked off their time at the Ontario Public Health Conference (TOPHC) with Strengthening organizational capacity within public health units to address health equity. The NCCDH held this preconference workshop on April 2, 2013, in partnership with the alPHa-OPHA Health Equity Workgroup and the Community Health Nurses Initiative Group (CHNIG), an interest group of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario.
As a student volunteer, I was able to see firsthand how the NCCDH engages public health professionals, encourages resource sharing, and helps local staff to incorporate theory and evidence into everyday practice. I also had the opportunity to learn about prominent issues public health staff face every day in working towards health equity.
Small group dialogues
Sume Ndumbe-Eyoh, a Knowledge Translation specialist at the NCCDH, facilitated the event using a method called open space technology. Participants identified several topics, and then engaged in related dialogues. Each dialogue was led by a participant who had expressed specific interest in exploring that topic, and participants were able to attend whichever dialogues they felt would be most useful for their practice. The energy and passion in the room was palpable.
The open space dialogues gave participants the opportunity to discuss -among other topics - the role of the social determinant of health Public Health Nurses. For those who love acronyms, this role is often referred to as the “SDH PHN” – a position found in local public health units across Ontario. Other dialogue topics included health equity tools, organizational capacity-building, methods for data collection and health equity measures, intersectoral partnerships, influencing policy and advocacy, engaging with socially and economically excluded populations, and communicating about health equity and the social determinants of health. (For resources related to these topics, see "related" at the bottom of this page.)
The dialogues had some common threads. Participants expressed the need and desire to:
- Continue to collaborate, share information and problem-solve
- Have a clear way of identifying “priority populations” (those who have experienced marginalization due to social and economic exclusion)
- Measure the impact their work is having on health equity
- Use common language to discuss the social determinants of health and foster collective investment to address health equity.
Planning for the future
We closed with group sessions on collective visioning. Action plans focused on making improvements to the following:
- Networking, support, and workshops for the SDH PHNs
- Communication and collaboration between different work groups to share resources and relevant information
- Tools and resources for evaluation, and a framework within which to use evaluation methods
- Credibility of mixed-methods data (with the addition of narrative qualitative data)
Personal reflections
I had many interesting conversations throughout the day. It was inspiring to feel such commitment and enthusiasm from participants. The challenges that SDH PHNs expressed in conceptualizing the social determinants of health and health equity, measuring impact, and identifying priority populations, resonated with me as a public health student. I have since been thinking about how health promoters, including public health nurses, and other public health professionals can collaborate more effectively to address the social determinants of health and health inequities.
Related links
Click here to see my "storify" (Twitter story) from this preconference session. You may also be interested in a storify on TOPHC tweets containing the hashtags #sdoh #healthequity (published by @Ask_Pemma) as well as others that are posted on the TOPHC blog. Stay tuned for a more in depth report on the highlights of this workshop in the coming months!
Tags
CollaborationCompetencies & organizational standardsStudents