Dear <<First Name>>

I am delighted to be writing this blog as the new Chair of IFIC Australia and, in so doing, to pay tribute to our outgoing Chair – Peter McGeorge – for his commitment and enthusiasm over the past 2 years. I’m also please to learn that we have gained a new Platinum partnership with our friends at North Sydney and North East Sydney LHD in collaboration with Central and Eastern Sydney PHN. This two-year agreement seeks to focus on integrated care in metropolitan areas, a context that brings its own set of challenges, and we are planning an educational and learning programme for next year to be held in Sydney.

As many of you will know, I have emigrated to Australia to build a new research institute based on the Central Coast that will be dedicated to integrated and population health. A key focus for the Institute will be to build capacity and support to innovations in integrated care on the Central Coast by working with the widest range of community partners.

As we know from other places – such as Clalit in Israel; Intermountain in the USA; Kinzigtal, Germany; Norrtaelje, Sweden; and the Basque Country, Spain – the acceleration of successful innovations in this field move at a faster and more sustainable pace when the system benefits from having an active research and innovation partner sitting alongside it.

My hopes are high that we can demonstrate such value here on the Central Coast in Australia, as well as look beyond these borders to work with partners across Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Our ongoing association with IFIC and IFIC Australia will be important in growing that capability, so I am very happy to take on the role of Chair to promote the growth of what IFIC Australia is seeking to achieve.

I also sense there remains great enthusiasm for integrated care as a means to promote value in care delivery and to embrace and tackle ‘wicked problems’ in population health. At the 7th National PHN Forum in Canberra on 10-12 September I was privileged to listen to so many great ideas and projects that are ongoing in this space, and the enthusiasm for creating learning networks in Queensland and Victoria that IFIC Australia and its partners might help to convene to stretch its base from NSW.

A key message from this Forum was the need to connect better with our communities. So to move away from health-centric and institutionally-based care towards more holistic approaches that take care and support upstream into primary and community settings. Moreover, the need to engage and empower communities, and build resilience, was a common emerging theme – whether this be related to dealing with the mental health impact of drought, to the inequalities faced by indigenous peoples, to the fragmented way in which older people’s care and support is managed.

I look forward to being central to this debate for the years to come.

Professor Nick Goodwin is the Director of the Central Coast Research Institute for Integrated Care and Population Health, a joint venture of the University of Newcastle and Central Coast Local Health District. Nick was the co-Founder and former CEO of the International Foundation for Integrated Care

• Achieving Value for People and Populations
• Implementing Integrated Care
• Empowering and Engaging People and Communities
• Integrated Care Innovations, Models and Systems
• Evaluation, Monitoring and Quality Improvement
• Improving People’s Health and Well-being through Integrated Care

Good news! You have more time to prepare and submit your paper for ICIC20, the 20th International Conference on Integrated Care, to take place in  Šibenik, Croatia from 27-29 April 2020.

The new deadline is Friday, 11 October!

The conference will build on themes from previous years and in particular would like to include in this year's programme papers that are focusing on the following areas:

• Meeting the challenges of integrated care in early development, childhood and transitional care in adolescents
• Integrated community care approaches for better management of diseases with a stigmatizing effect, including for example mental health and addiction issues 
• Better managing the care of vulnerable populations including for example war veterans, and preventing isolation and loneliness 
• Integrating survivorship, caring for carers, palliative and end-of-life care 
• Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital tools in the people-centred integrated care 

• Policy Development
• Role of Research 
• Implementation Science 
• Model-based Approaches to Integrated Care 
• Supporting Specific Populations 
• Supporting People with Specific Conditions 
• Workforce Development 
• Digital Health and Data Management  
• Palliative and End of Life Care 
• Intermediate Care and Care Transitions 
• Children, Young people and Families 
• Self-management and Co-production 

Each abstract submitter is asked to tick the track that their paper is most relevant to. This system will enable the programme committee and Special Interest Group leads, to group papers together in a way that works best for delegates to navigate the programme and maximise their learning opportunities. 

Abstract submitters are also asked a number of supplementary questions. Please consider these carefully and allow some extra time for submission. If you are unsure how to answer please contact us at ICIC20@integratedcarefoundation.org if you are unsure how to answer. The supplementary questions will not impact your score and are just used as guidance for how we schedule and allocated your paper to the programme. 

From a global perspective the Australia health system is considered to be high quality, accessible and innovative delivering good patient outcomes. While there is much to be positive about a closer look reveals we have much more to do as we strive to span the boundaries created by differing policy, funding and delivery mechanisms across Federal and State systems. Our everyday context is shaped by a system of care that has its fair share of fragmented service delivery, incompatible information systems, a lack of coordination and a funding mechanism that frustrates integration. If we consider a health system under increasing financial pressure driven by growing demand where the proposed solution remains a largely hospital centric response, we have a problem and traditionally we look to Government to create a policy solution. 

There is strong evidence that children and adults who experience, severe adversity will have a higher prevalence of health and wellbeing problems across their life course [1, 2]. Consequently, people with lived adversity have earlier morbidity and mortality compared to their peers. As well as increasing poor health outcomes, ACE has been shown to be associated with increased health service utilisation and economic cost to the Australian community through long term effects of reduced productivity, welfare receipt, medical costs, unemployment and a range of other factors.

Sydney Local Health District (SLHD) has undertaken a number of innovative interagency initiatives to address this lived adversity and its outcomes, including a programme of research and collaborative policy design. That work has been undertaken in partnership with consumers, practitioners, and State policy agencies.

Professor John Eastwood is Adjunct Associate Professor for Public Health at the School of Public Health, Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney.

While we may say that the patient’s perspective should be the “organising principle of service delivery” do we really mean it? How is our understanding of integration informed by the patient perspective and are the two concepts incidentally related or inextricably linked?

In this webinar Dr Nick Goodwin, Chair of IFIC Australia will be joined by Danny Vadasz, CEO of leading health consumer advocacy organisation Health Issues Centre. Danny Vadasz brings a fresh non-clinical perspective to the challenges of health reform and the role of consumers in shaping change. His current career as CEO of leading health consumer advocacy organisation, the Health issues Centre, continues a lifetime of community and consumer engagement practice across the education, environmental, human rights and local government sectors as well as in the consumer goods industry.

The webinar takes place this Wednesday, 25th September at 8:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time.

IFIC Australia welcomes its new consortium Partner, comprising Sydney LHD, South Eastern Sydney LHD and Central and Eastern Sydney PHN. As a consortium, the group is interested in working with IFIC Australia in examining how integrated care can best be taken forward in metropolitan areas. As a Platinum partner for the next two years, an early ambition will be to convene a one-week learning programme in Sydney to explore these issues.

IFIC supports a host of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which have been set up by IFIC members to allow the collaboration and development of specific topics within the Integrated Care field. These groups are led by experts in their respective specialist areas and give like-minded individuals the opportunity to make valuable contacts and gain insight and additional knowledge.

The overall aim for SIGs is to promote the development, adaptation or translation of scientific approaches for the specific purposes of integrated care, and/or promote a specific topic within the integrated care field. Topics may focus on research methodologies and certain target groups or similar.

SIGs run independently but receive support from IFIC via its website, which facilitates a blog and discussion forum. IFIC also helps SIGs promote their work via its communication channels including conferences, newsletters, social media platforms, marketing partners and our website.

Join IFIC’s growing SIGs movement, you just need join IFIC's Global Network - joining is free!