Background: My Health My Community (MHMC) is a collaborative initiative, developed to fill a gap in health and well-being information for Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) and Fraser Health (FH) regions. MHMC survey sought to capture information within the domains of socio-demographics, health status, lifestyle, access to care, built environment and community resiliency. VCH and FHA engaged their municipal governments and community partners to develop relevant content and recruit participants. Purpose: Understand the burden and determinants of chronic disease at a local level (municipal and neighborhood) that facilitates partnership with local governments and community organizations to create health-promoting environments.
AbstractDevolution to the state and local levels of responsibility for economic development, funding of essential services, and many planning functions occurred at a time of high integration of the U.S. economy and unrelenting competition from abroad. What we needed was coordination, but the response was increased fragmentation. Now and in the near future, the external and internal challenges facing our economy and society must be addressed through linkages and relationships among sectors and institutions.
Intersectoral actions in the sport-for-development field constitute a pre-condition for the implementation of sport-based interventions. At an operational level, the multi-professional group is the tool through which intersectoral collaboration may successfully achieve its aims. Despite the prominent role of the group, this topic is under-researched in terms of understanding intersectoral actions in the sport-for-development field. By applying a psycho-sociological perspective, our research explores the role of the multi-professional group as a limit/resource for sport-for-development workers that operate with vulnerable youth. Following a phenomenological interpretive approach, 12 practitioners (six sport workers and six social workers) participated in semi-structured interviews to explore the role of multi-professional groups as a resource/limit in working with socially vulnerable youth through sport. The results indicate that, in the participants' experience, belonging to a multi-professional group is a meaningful resource to trigger reflexivity, promote collaboration and integrate their different professions. The interviews highlighted the positive potential of this tool to address the challenges that emerge when working with socially vulnerable youth, including the management of negative emotions, unexpected events and the relationship with young people. Some interviews also suggested that the presence of multiple professions, under certain circumstances, may be a risk when working with youth. These findings have significant value for programme design, strategy and management as they show the value of trans-disciplinary practices as an agenda for social inclusion through sport.
In: Hendriks , A M , Jansen , M W J , Gubbels , J S , de Vries , N K , Molleman , G & Kremers , S P J 2015 , ' Local government officials' view on intersectoral collaboration within their organization- A qualitative exploration ' , Health Policy and Technology , vol. 4 , no. 1 , pp. 47-57 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hlpt.2014.10.013
Objectives: Intersectoral collaboration (ISC) is defined as collaboration between health and non-health local government officials and is a prerequisite for the development of integrated policies that address wicked public health problems. In practice, ISC has proven to be problematic, which might be related to differing views on ISC across various policy sectors. Therefore, our objective was to explore local officials views on ISC. Methods: We interviewed 19 officials responsible for 10 different policy sectors within two small-sized municipal governments within one Dutch region. We asked interviewees about ISC facilitators and barriers and categorized them in the theory-based concepts of capability, opportunity and motivation. Results: Capability was found to be determined by the ability to share policy goals, and was more likely to increase when officials had greater motivation to continue learning. Interviewees in both municipalities expected that flatter organizational structures and coaching of officials by managers could improve ISC opportunities. When the perceived feasibility of ISC and professional autonomy was low, motivation to learn new ISC skills was low. Conclusion: In the view of government officials, ISC is an appropriate tool to address wicked public health problems, but implementing ISC requires flatter organizational structures, merging of departmental cultures and leadership by heads of departments and town clerks in order to decrease officials fears of losing professional autonomy. Public Health Service officials can play a more active role in merging cultures by increasing understanding about the multi-dimensionality of public health and reframing health goals in the terminology of the non-ealth sector.
AbstractCollaborations between and within sectors are common and crucial to the creation and transfer of knowledge. It is often unclear who is involved in the collaboration, and with whom and why they are collaborating. I studied reasons for collaboration and how capital and institutions affect collaboration through a mixed methods analysis of infection and immunity research and development collaborations in Vancouver, Canada between individuals affiliated with universities, firms, and health‐care organizations. I found that both capital and institutions were important in collaboration decisions. Collaboration worked as a balancing act between capital and institutions. Potential collaborators needed to offer different capital to the collaboration while supporting the dominant institutions of potential collaborators. Participants' organizational and sectoral affiliations influenced available capital and dominant institutions. These findings help policy makers understand collaboration dynamics between sectors and how translation can occur between universities, firms, and health‐care organizations.
As they assemble organizations from different economic sectors, intersectoral collaborations are co-constituted by institutional pluralism. However, the intimacy and inequality of these arrangements also constrain an organization's ability to respond strategically to the concomitant institutional pluralism. Members of the organization experience pluralism as a tension I call moral ambivalence, that is, they simultaneously hold opposing judgments about their actions or the situations in which they find themselves. Moral ambivalence leads actors to engage in institutional work, pragmatic compromises directed toward coping with the competing institutional rules they face. This institutional work produces hybrid actions that, in turn, help the organization maintain internal cohesion and prevent negative outcomes. The article traces the sources of institutional pluralism to organizational imprinting from for-profit partners and institutional pressures from other members of the field. Data come from an ethnography of a single nonprofit organization that collaborates with several large for-profit organizations.
Background: Intersectoral collaboration is critical to the successful implementation of many public health interventions (PHIs). Little attention has been paid to whether and how processes at the stage of evaluation can promote intersectoral collaboration. The objective of this study was to examine European experiences and views on whether and how the evaluation of PHIs promote intersectoral collaboration. Methods: A qualitative study design was used. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 individuals centrally involved in the evaluation of PHIs in 6 European countries (Austria, Denmark, England, Germany, Norway, and Switzerland). Questions pertained to current processes for evaluating PHIs in the country and current and potential strategies for promoting intersectoral collaboration. Transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify key themes responding to our primary objective. Results: Experiences with promoting intersectoral collaboration through the evaluation of PHIs could be summarized in 4 themes: (1) Early involvement of non-health sectors in the evaluative process and inclusion of non-health benefits can promote intersectoral collaboration, but should be combined with greater influence of these sectors in shaping PHIs; (2) Harmonization of methodological approaches may enable comparison of results and facilitate intersectoral collaboration, but should not be an overriding goal; (3) Involvement in health impact assessments (HIAs) can promote intersectoral collaboration, but needs to be incentivized and be conducted without putting overwhelming demands on non-health sectors; (4) A designated body for evaluating PHIs may promote intersectoral collaboration, but its design needs to take account of realities of policy-making. Conclusion: The full potential for promoting intersectoral collaboration through the evaluation of PHIs appears currently unrealized in the settings we studied. To further promote intersectoral collaboration, evaluators and decisionmakers may consider the full range of strategies characterized in this study. This may be most effective if the strategies are deployed so that they reinforce each other, value outcomes beyond health, and are tailored to maximize political priority for PHIs across sectors.
AbstractDespite the increasing importance of intersectoral collaborations to address crisis situations, relatively little is known about how they are organised, managed and governed. Moreover, within the field of public administration, there is still much to learn about how governments can use intersectoral collaboration to effectively address crises. This paper examines the case of the Coordinated Donor Support initiative in South Africa's COVID‐19 vaccination programme to illustrate the value of multisectoral partnerships, especially for developing countries. This partnership involved donors and philanthropic organisations, non‐governmental and civil society organisations, and private sector organisations, yet it sought to partner with the government, rather than take over the government's role. The paper also explores the complexities, contradictions and threats to such partnerships, and what is required to optimise them. It argues that several measures need to be put in place in the pre‐crisis phase to ensure that such multisectoral collaborations can quickly be mobilised when crises occur. It also shows that partnerships which are forged in times of crisis can assist countries to address their ongoing developmental challenges.
The Norwegian Government emphasizes intersectoral collaboration to achieve health goals such as reducing social health differences. However, research shows that achieving fruitful collaboration between different organizations and the public sector is challenging. The sports sector is one potential partner for such collaboration. Although the Government calls for intersectoral collaboration that includes the sports sector, there are few concrete guidelines for how this may be implemented in practice. Guided by The Bergen Model of Collaborative Functioning, the purpose of this study was to explore factors that promote or inhibit collaboration in an intersectoral project involving the sports sector, NGOs, and public sector. The current project aimed to work towards creating health promoting activities aimed at vulnerable youths. Methods: A qualitative case study of the Sports Project with interviews of eleven collaborative partners. Results: Factors promoting collaboration amongst the different partners were having a common mission, an appreciation of the partners' complementary skills and knowledge, and a consistent user perspective. Conclusions: By orienting the collaboration towards the users' needs, the partners have succeeded in creating tailored health-promoting activities for vulnerable youths. However, a challenge remains in transforming the collaborative project into a sustainable structure.
The burden of chronic disease in Europe continues to grow. A major challenge facing national governments is how to tackle the risk factors of sedentary lifestyle, alcohol abuse, smoking, and unhealthy diet. These factors are complex and necessitate intersectoral collaboration to strengthen health promotion, counter-act the social determinants of health, and reduce the prevalence of chronic disease. European countries have diverse intersectoral collaboration to encourage health promotion activities. In the Joint Action CHRODIS-PLUS success factors for intersectoral collaboration within and outside healthcare which strengthen health promotion activities were identified with a mixed method design via a survey of 22 project partners in 14 countries and 2 workshops. In six semi-structured interviews, the mechanisms underlying these success factors were examined. These mechanisms can be very context-specific but do give more insight into how they can be replicated. In this paper, 20 health promotion interventions from national programs in CHRODIS PLUS are explored. This includes community interventions, policy actions, integrated approaches, capacity building, and training activities. The interventions involved collaboration across three to more than six sectors. The conclusion is a set of seven recommendations that are considered to be essential for fostering intersectoral collaboration to improve health-promoting activities.
To effectively control the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak in later stages in Vietnam requires addressing the existing gaps in the national health emergency framework, consolidate, and inform its structure, we conducted this study to evaluate the importance and collaborative mechanism between health and community service workers with intersectional organizations at grassroots levels in Vietnam. A cross-sectional, web-based survey was conducted from 12/2019 to 02/2020 on 581 participants (37 health workers, 473 medical students, and 71 community service workers). The snowball sampling technique was used to recruit participants. We used exploratory factor analysis to test the construct validity of the questionnaire measuring the perceived efficiency of involving community service workers in health care–related activities and Tobit models to examine its associated factors. The results showed the importance of local organizations in epidemic preparedness and response at grassroots levels, with scores ranging from 6.4 to 7.1, in which the Vietnam Youth Federation played the most important role (mean = 7.1, SD = 2.2). Of note, community service workers were viewed as performing well in health communication and education at agencies, schools, and other localities. Medical students perceived higher efficiency of involving community service workers in health care–related activities at grassroots levels as compared to health workers. We encourage the government to promote intersectoral collaboration in epidemic preparedness and response, giving attention to scale up throughout training as well as interdistrict and interprovincial governance mechanisms. ; Full Text
Background: A 'Health in All Policies' (HiAP) approach has been widely advocated as a way to involve multiple government sectors in addressing health inequalities, but implementation attempts have not always produced the expected results. Explaining how HiAP-style collaborations have been governed may offer insights into how to improve population health and reduce health inequalities. Methods: Theoretically focused systematic review. Synthesis of evidence from evaluative studies into a causal logic model. Results: Thirty-one publications based on 40 case studies from nine high-income countries were included. Intersectoral collaborations for population health and equity were multi-component and multi-dimensional with collaborative activity spanning policy, strategy, service design and service delivery. Governance of intersectoral collaboration included structural and relational components. Both internal and external legitimacy and credibility delivered collaborative power, which in turn enabled intersectoral collaboration. Internal legitimacy was driven by multiple structural elements and processes. Many of these were instrumental in developing (often-fragile) relational trust. Internal credibility was supported by multi-level collaborations that were adequately resourced and shared power. External legitimacy and credibility was created through meaningful community engagement, leadership that championed collaborations and the identification of 'win-win' strategies. External factors such as economic shocks and short political cycles reduced collaborative power. Conclusion: This novel review, using systems thinking and causal loop representations, offers insights into how collaborations can generate internal and external legitimacy and credibility. This offers promise for future collaborative activity for population health and equity; it presents a clearer picture of what structural and relational components and dynamics collaborative partners can focus on when planning and implementing HiAP initiatives. The limits ...
Background A 'Health in All Policies' (HiAP) approach has been widely advocated as a way to involve multiple government sectors in addressing health inequalities, but implementation attempts have not always produced the expected results. Explaining how HiAP-style collaborations have been governed may offer insights into how to improve population health and reduce health inequalities. Methods Theoretically focused systematic review. Synthesis of evidence from evaluative studies into a causal logic model. Results Thirty-one publications based on 40 case studies from nine high-income countries were included. Intersectoral collaborations for population health and equity were multicomponent and multi-dimensional with collaborative activity spanning policy, strategy, service design and service delivery. Governance of intersectoral collaboration included structural and relational components. Both internal and external legitimacy and credibility delivered collaborative power, which in turn enabled intersectoral collaboration. Internal legitimacy was driven by multiple structural elements and processes. Many of these were instrumental in developing (often-fragile) relational trust. Internal credibility was supported by multi-level collaborations that were adequately resourced and shared power. External legitimacy and credibility was created through meaningful community engagement, leadership that championed collaborations and the identification of 'win-win' strategies. External factors such as economic shocks and short political cycles reduced collaborative power. Conclusion This novel review, using systems thinking and causal loop representations, offers insights into how collaborations can generate internal and external legitimacy and credibility. This offers promise for future collaborative activity for population health and equity; it presents a clearer picture of what structural and relational components and dynamics collaborative partners can focus on when planning and implementing HiAP initiatives. The limits of the literature base, however, does not make it possible to identify if or how this might deliver improved population health or health equity.
