More than 200 people from diverse roles, sectors, and regions across British Columbia came together at a health summit in January to discuss shared priorities for improving BC’s health system.

The Breathe and Weave: Talking Across Silos to Enable Health System Improvement health summit was a series of three linked dialogue sessions with healthcare policymakers, administrators, providers, community members, academics, and partners from organizations interested in health.

We can have greater impact collectively when we understand where our interests overlap and how our efforts affect each other.

The summit was hosted by the BC Health Systems Partnership (convened by UBC Health), who identified the need to create this space for dialogue to support collaboration across regions and sectors.

“Our progress in healthcare improvement often depends on how we communicate and coordinate effectively across organizational boundaries,” says Dr. Ray Markham, Special Advisor to UBC’s Vice President, Health on Health Systems. “We can have greater impact collectively when we understand where our interests overlap and how our efforts affect each other.”

The health summit was designed to:

• enable participants to learn from each other about improvement efforts happening in BC;
• identify areas/aspects of the system where there is potential to expedite and accelerate these efforts overall; and
• reveal more opportunities for coordination and collaboration to increase positive impact.

The health summit was the first opportunity in recent years for a large scale of people representing many regions and sectors to meet specifically for intersectoral dialogue about health and healthcare in British Columbia in the broadest sense.  

To learn more about the health summit, download the report.

Posted April 3, 2023