Section 1 – Local Innovation Partnerships
What is a Local Innovation Partnership (LIP)?
Local Innovation Partnerships (LIPs) represent communities with complex challenges to the delivery of community-based primary health care (CBPHC). IMPACT began by creating learning networks of decision makers, researchers, clinicians, and members of vulnerable populations in six local health regions.
A LIP is a community of stakeholders who share a common concern around vulnerable populations that are at increased risk due to limited access-to-care.
LIPs can provide the foundation for a set of collaborative activities that involve:
- identifying local accessibility needs and the most vulnerable subgroups;
- clearly describing local context and its influence on implementation;
- combining local knowledge with evidence emerging from empirical research to select and implement innovative models of care; and
- evaluating the impact of these models on access to primary health care for the vulnerable communities.
Why use a LIP?
Potential benefits of participation in the LIP include:
- Facilitated dialogues that engage local community and decision makers across sectors in designing organisational innovations to improve access to primary health care for vulnerable populations
- Connection with colleagues across provincial, national and international contexts. Sharing of lessons learned across contexts can further inform future practice innovations for vulnerable populations
- Support for analysis of local data related to needs and access gaps for vulnerable populations
- Consolidation and appraisal of evidence-related strategies currently used to address access issues
- Identification of leading practices that address access issues within local contexts and across diverse contexts
Overarching roles of the LIPs
- Identify the needs of vulnerable populations related to CBPHC access
- Inform design of access-focused interventions with a documented and detailed understanding of local context
- Anchor the initiative in the local community through deliberative processes for public consultation and collective decision-making
- Evaluate the impact of access-focused interventions
- Undertake a developmental approach to evaluation (see Section 3 – Developmental Approach to Evaluation)
groups whose demographic, geographic, economic and/or cultural characteristics impede or compromise their access to community-based primary health care services
a novel set of behaviours or routines implemented through planned and coordinated actions (based on Greenhalgh, 2004)
Excludes innovation aimed at individual practitioner behaviour changes (e.g., clinical practice, treatment innovation) if they are not intended to address one of the dimensions of service accessibility
Excludes innovations aimed at community members (e.g., general health literacy strategies)
Requires action to be planned and coordinated
May include behaviours or routines provided off-site or externally that improves accessibility of the community-based primary health care organisation (e.g., routine access to telephone translation services).
community-based primary healthcare
