Pandemic Next Steps

Sudha Kutty
Vice President, Strategy & External Relations
Humber River Hospital

The development, evaluation, and production of vaccines for Covid-19 was the remarkable success story of 2020. The challenge for 2021 is getting those vaccines into the arms of the population: individual people whose backgrounds and habits are infinitely varied. Effectiveness in this step determines success.

At this pivotal moment in the pandemic, we take time to look at the distribution and communications regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, and the role that all health care organizations play in this incredibly important endeavour.

Objectives:

• Identify steps that can help with accelerating mass vaccinations

Speakers to be announced.

Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19. The term “racial and ethnic minority groups” includes people of colour with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. But some experiences are common to many people within these groups, and social determinants of health have historically prevented them from having fair opportunities for economic, physical, and emotional health.
To help address the issues around vaccine trust and confidence within these communities, all health care organizations need to provide COVID-19 health and safety awareness in marginalized communities and work with experts to prepare for and support immunization.

Objectives:

• Discuss the largest barriers and solutions in getting marginalized populations vaccinated

Celina Caesar-Chavannes
Sr. Advisor and EDI Consultant, Queen’s University
Book Author, Can You Hear Me Now?

Trevor Aldridge
Member, Black Community COVID-19 Response Plan
Senior Director of Quality & Compliance, Brevitas Consulting Inc.

More speakers to be announced soon.

As health care organizations continue to manage the challenges and uncertainties of the pandemic, they should consider not only how to respond and recover, but also how to prepare themselves for tomorrow. Thousands of health care procedures were cancelled when hospitals adjusted operations to brace for the wave of COVID-19 patients. How do we create lasting capacity within the public system beyond the current crisis? Our response must be rooted in solid evidence about system reform.

Objectives:

• Discuss opportunities for solving the immediate capacity crisis
• Identify opportunities for health care reform

Speakers to be announced.

CritiCall Ontario is built on the everyday challenges that many hospitals face caring for emergent patients that may require care beyond what the hospital and its staff can provide. In this session, participants will learn how challenges, and sometimes even crises, have been key drivers of innovation at CritiCall Ontario since its inception in the 1980s. The discussion will include highlights of how the systems and services of CritiCall Ontario are rooted in practical and experiential healthcare issues, including SARs in 2003, and how these systems and services have continued to evolve into foundational tools that have been flexed and adapted during the current COVID-19 Pandemic.

Objectives:

• Identify how rapid change cycles can be used to adapt existing tools and systems to be immediately responsive to quickly changing health care challenges and priorities
• Examine why prioritizing provincial approaches to health care delivery is important and how approaches can be scaled and adapted based on changing needs
• Recognize how all Ontario hospitals can benefit by participating in the services and systems available through CritiCall Ontario

Christine Moon
Manager, Communications & Client Relations
CritiCall Ontario

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant surge of adult patients requiring hospital-based care. In contrast, it became clear early in the pandemic that very few children required hospitalization due to COVID-19 and that the public health measures were leading to a decrease in pediatric hospital admissions. Many pediatric healthcare facilities developed innovative solutions to contribute to the pandemic response. The Montreal Children’s Hospital of the McGill University Health Center used the advantage of its geographical location being on the same site as the adult mission to contribute to the pandemic response by providing some of its human resources, but also physical space, in a comprehensive and adaptive manner throughout the course of the pandemic.

Objectives:

• Recognize the principles that lead to the creation of the MCH contingency plan during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Summarize the approach to the redeployment of pediatric human resources to support the adult care mission
• Examine how the MCH response adapted throughout the course of the pandemic

Dre. Mylene Dandavino
Pediatric Hospitalist
The Montreal Children’s Hospital

Dre. Tanya DiGenova
Pediatric Intensivist
The Montreal Children’s Hospital

In a nationwide survey that was conducted by the Canadian Mental Health Association and researchers at the University of British Columbia that was released in December, 40 percent of Canadians said their mental health had worsened since last March.

Patients suffering with mental illness costs twice as much to treat as cancer patients. We know that patient navigation saves lives, improves outcomes and efficiency. This is why by 2011, Canada adopted patient navigation for cancer patients across the country, and why it is viewed as essential to the quality of oncology care today. So why are we not offering patients with mental illness patient navigation?

We have a model of care that we can build on to tackle a category of illnesses that are twice as costly to treat.

Objectives:

• Highlight evidence based research on patient navigators to help patients navigate their way through the mental health-care system
• Discuss what our governments and corporate health programs need to implement to avoid the upcoming epidemic of mental illness that could overwhelm the mental health-care system

Angela Johnson
Founder & President
Medical Confidence Inc.

Mike will use examples and lessons from the COVID-19 experience to highlight government relations strategies and communications that have brought the Canadian Nurses Association through a very tough year while also finding it once again listed by Hill Times among the “Top 100 Lobbyists” in Ottawa.
He will use real examples of briefs, press releases, discussion papers, polling, committee appearances and private meetings with party leaders, cabinet ministers and MPs to drive a policy agenda intended to stabilize the immediate disaster in some long-term care settings and set directions over the long term for healthy, safe, and dignified aging in Canada.

Objectives:

• Identify best communication practices for long lasting policy change
• Exemplify effective lobbying strategies

Mike Villeneuve
Chief Executive Officer
Canadian Nurses Association