In July 2021, the Ministry of Health offered one-time funding to Ontario Health Teams (OHTs), ‘In Development Teams’ and other health care organizations to implement, enhance and scale virtual care programs and services. The funding was intended to support the recovery of the health system from Covid-19 by increasing access to services, changing how care is delivered and building digital capacity.
The Learning Collaborative (LC) is a short-term learning system that brings together peers from multiple organizations to seek improvement in a focused topic area, with guidance from a coach or practice facilitator. This approach was developed by the Institute for Health Information (IHI)’s Collaborative Model for Achieving Breakthrough Improvement.
At the June 2020 Alliance Annual General Meeting, Alliance members unanimously passed a resolution to advance sociodemographic data collection in our sector, with a goal of all member organizations having a 75% data completion rate by 2024. Collecting this data is essential to our mission of advancing health equity, because it provides evidence we need to advocate for our clients in priority populations and tailor service delivery to improve care. It also helps us to obtain funding and support for programs that assist our most vulnerable clients.
As the overdose crisis worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, health care experts and people who use drugs called for greater access to a safer supply of prescription medications as an alternative to the toxic illegal drug supply.
This environmental scan was developed to help advance access to interpretation services the KW4 area (Kitchener, Waterloo, Wellesley, Wilmot, Woolwich). However, it contains a literature review and information about resources that reach well beyond KW4. It was shared with the Alliance because it may be useful to other member organizations and their community & system partners.
The chapters in this report discuss relevant findings from the scientific literature on priority health risks related to climate change and on adaptation options for protecting health. Where information is available, chapters include quantitative projections of future health risks from climate change (see Chapter 5: Air Quality; Chapter 6: Infectious Diseases; Chapter 7: Water Quality, Quantity, and Security).
Executive Summary
Key findings from this report are available as an infographic here.In Ontario, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the ongoing opioid overdose crisis, leading to a significant rise in unintentional deaths due to opioid-related toxicity.