Log in

IJIC is delighted to welcome to its Editorial Board Cara English and Donata Kurpas.

Dr. Cara English has more than 20 years of experience in the fields of psychology, counseling, and integrated behavioral health care. She enjoys working in academic, clinical, and policy roles. She is the CEO of Cummings Graduate Institute for Behavioral Health Studies where she serves as a faculty member, advisor, and chairs Doctor of Behavioral Health culminating projects. Cara co-founded Terra’s Place in 2016 to address the mental health service gap for pregnant and postpartum mothers and families. She co-led an integration pilot at Willow Birth Center which has now become a leading model for Women’s Health Integration in the Arizona community, and continues to serve there as an integrated Doctor of Behavioral Health. Cara is passionate about empowering mothers and their partners to make informed decisions about their care that are in line with family, cultural, and spiritual values.

Prof Donata Kurpas is a full-time senior researcher and lecturer at the Department of Family Medicine, Wroclaw Medical University (WMU), engaged in undergraduate and postgraduate training of medical students and family physicians. She has been national coordinator of European Projects and has also led several research projects at the Wroclaw Medical University. She is author and co-author of over 600 scientific publications and book chapters, especially in the field of family medicine and primary care, public health, geriatrics, and management of chronic diseases. She has received the Minister of Health First Degree Award for scientific achievements. She is chair of the International Advisory Board of the European Rural and Isolated Practitioners and an active member of many scientific societies, e.g. the European Academy of Teachers in General Practice, the Polish Society of Family Medicine, the Polish Society of Psychiatry.

Regardless of the purpose of the activity, commitment and passion direct Donata. She has participated in many multi-center projects in Poland and abroad (including the Fulbright Foundation scholarship), is a reviewer of the National Centre for Research and Development, a member of the Interdisciplinary Team for the Research Infrastructure Support Program (Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland), an expert of the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development and the European Commission. In addition, she is the scholar of: EURACT (conference scholarship for young doctors), SOROS Foundation, Foundation for Polish Science, Foundation of E. Niedzwirski. She has been awarded several times for academic and didactic work.

Donata is also a member of the IFIC Board.

IJIC Special Collection Call for Papers

Integrated care has often been characterised as a people-centred and community-oriented approach. Yet the field of integrated care – in policy, practice and research – has not fully embraced or understood how people-centred care can and should be built into integrated care strategies and programmes. Moreover, knowledge and evidence of the potential impact of people-centred care on integrated care is lacking.

People-centred care seeks to build the skills and resources that individuals and communities need to be articulate and empowered users of health services. It is an approach that seeks to support people to make effective decisions about their own health to achieve the outcomes that matter most to them. It enables communities to become active in partnering with care services and contributing to relevant research, education and healthy public policy. Special attention is often given to tackling inequalities by engaging and supporting the voices of marginalised, vulnerable and disengaged people.

This special collection will bring together papers that focus on empowering and engaging people and, specifically, on the role and impact of co-production and co-design in integrated care.

Submission deadline: 31st March 2020

Expected publication launch of special collection: 1st October 2020

Please read the full Call for Papers for more details.

Good news! You have two more weeks 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 Thursday 31 October!

Submitting a paper
Please find the time to submit a paper to present at the world's largest conference dedicated to the field of integrated care. We will continue to accept submissions until Thursday, 31 October but to support us to efficiently manage the reviewing process and programme design, please don't leave it to the last minute. We appreciate you submitting your papers ASAP. The paper is limited to 500 words and should relate to the conference themes and tracks. Instructions on how to submit a paper are available in the abstract tool once you have created an account.

Submit an abstract

At the end of September, Interim CEO Toni Dedeu and senior researchers Nieves Ehrenberg and Monica Sorensen will travel to Vancouver, Canada, to the 3rd Transnational Forum for Integrated Community Care (TransForm) conference. IFIC is the content partner of this joint initiative of Foundations in Europe and Canada that aims to put the community at the centre of primary and integrated care.

The goals of the conference, entitled Building stronger communities through Integrated Community Care are to:

1. Demonstrate the positive impact community engagement and empowerment can have on improving people’s health and wellbeing
2. Understand the options and processes by which local communities by local decision-making can support the creation and maintenance of new forms of partnerships and alliances between formal and informal sectors
3. Explore how to mobilise policy makers and community leaders to take the lead towards system transformation through community-led collaborative approaches
4. Demonstrate how evaluation and research can support the design and deployment of community-based approaches that enable ICC

IFIC has been closely involved in developing the conference program, engaging inspirational speakers, ranging from Ministers to local innovators in integrated community care and preparing all background documents. The program also includes visits to a range of sites that have managed to improve the lives of people in the greater Vancouver area. Two of them are Foundry and Vancouver Native Health Society:

• Foundry targets young people aged 12-24 and provides a one-stop-shop for integrated mental health care, substance use services, primary care, social services and youth and family peer support; and
• Vancouver Native Health Society (VNHS) delivers comprehensive medical and social services to the Indigenous community of Greater Vancouver founded on traditional Indigenous knowledge and methodologies.

The conference, taking place from October 2nd to October 4th, will kick off with an Indigenous Territory Acknowledgement and throughout the three days, citizen and community leaders will weave into discussions, ensuring that citizens’ critical role in service design and delivery is at the forefront.

TransForm’s ambitions are very much at the heart of IFIC’s own mission and values. It provides special relevance on how non-institutional approaches to care through coordinated efforts between the formal and informal sectors can better empower and engage people and populations in their health. The project recognizes that integrated community care should be driven by goals-based and person-centred strategies to help empower people and help improve both the quality of care and quality of life of citizens, patients, service users, carers and families. This requires the coming together of a range of care partners to better plan, deliver and co-ordinate services to people and populations and the development of new forms of inter-professional and inter-agency collaborations across diverse contexts and settings. Whilst integrated community care is relevant to any person or group who would benefit from such support, this type of approach to care co-ordination at the community-level has specific advantages to the most vulnerable in society.