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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.

Good news! You have one more month 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 

This year's conference will accept abstracts for review on integrated care research, policy and practice across the following conference tracks:

• 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.

Submit an abstract

The 19th International Conference on Integrated Care took place in The Kursaal Conference Centre, San Sebastian, the Basque Region in Spain, on the 1-3 April 2019. With the overarching theme ‘Evaluating and implement models of integrated people-centred services’, the conference was a partnership of OSAKIDETZA – Basque Health Service, Bioef, Ministry for Health of the Basque Government the City Council of Donostia-San Sebastian and the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa. The conference brought together over 1300 delegates representing over 60 countries including researchers, clinicians and managers from around the world who are engaged in the design and delivery of integrated health and social care.

Conference presentations, videos and photographs are available to download here.

IJIC’s April to June 2019 issue is now complete. View here.