Putting the Social in Healthcare: Health x Social
by Mala Rajpal
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
~Andrew Carnegie
You know you’re onto a winner of an event when you are expecting around 40 people to register and you get more than 80 attendees instead — this was the case at our Health x Social event last week on 14th March 2019. Jointly organised by the Singapore Center for Social Enterprise (raiSE) and Asia P3 Hub, with the Working Capitol as the venue partner and Left Right SG as the media partner, the event enabled participants to learn about and explore the power of collaboration for social and community integrated care in Singapore.
It was clearly a topic of interest for the diverse mix of attendees that included: healthcare professionals, social entrepreneurs, startups, non-profit organisations, multinational companies, and healthcare advocates. Irrespective of our background, healthcare is an area that becomes personal for all of us at some point. Over the afternoon, we saw participants, panelists, and facilitators immerse themselves in engaging conversations surrounding integrated healthcare.
This event was a part of the Industry Circle series of raiSE and Bridges and Boats series of Asia P3 Hub. The concept of “bridges” & “boats” — aka cultural “insiders” and “outsiders” combines the diversity of perspectives with cultural experiences & knowledge to facilitate collaboration in teams and across partnerships. For more information, watch INSEAD Prof. Sujin Jang’s short explanation here.
Here are some of the highlights of the interactive and lively event.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE FIRESIDE CHAT OF THE ALL-WOMEN PANEL OF HEALTHCARE SPECIALISTS
Dr. Erwin Chan, Capacity Builder with raiSE, moderated the panel discussion. During the hour-long discussion, the panelists and audience talked about the various aspects of integrated care: What does great integrated care look like? How does it happen? What are some challenges and trends in this space? Who or what will further catalyse integrated care?
#1 — Collaboration is critical to good integrated care
Public-private-people partnerships are at the very core of great integrated care. Carolyn from ABBOTT, shared her experience of working with the government in Rwanda that aims to make healthcare accessible to its entire population by bringing facilities within the people’s reach. While building the infrastructure to do that is challenging, she sees it moving forward with great results that can be achieved on completion. Dr. Chow shared how the Ministry Of Health in Singapore is fully focused on building community help for patients after they discharge from hospitals. Having strong people systems combined with the communities of care, is the way forward for comprehensive integrated care. Wan Ling created Caregiver Asia after she personally experienced home-care during her grandmother’s illness. Her enterprise is built on the premise that affordable, accessible professional caregivers that can provide home care are essential for dignified care for patients. Susana from the Tsao Foundation shared why extensive, on the ground, know-how is needed to make any community initiative successful. With their successful active ageing program in Whampoa, partnering with grassroot organisations, understanding the risk profile and attitudes of the community and empowering the seniors were critical to building solutions of integrated care.
#2 — The role of the community is becoming increasingly core to care
1-in-4 Singaporeans are going to be 65+ years of age in 2030 compared to 1-in-8 right now. 1-in-9 Singapore residents in the age group of 18–69 were affected by diabetes in 2010. 1-in-7 people in Singapore have experienced a mental health disorder according to the Singapore Mental Health Study of 2016. When statistics like these get involved, it becomes everyone’s responsibility to become a part of the solution. Wan Ling shared how 90 percent of the elderly who have been impacted by an illness expressed their desire to go home (and have home-care). From preventive care to tertiary care, the community has become a key area to build and focus on. The truth that the one closest to you is the most aware of your problem and is most trusted by you, is making both governmental organisations and funding bodies invest in growing this community circle. Increasingly we will experience these communities of care becoming the centre of health, well-being, and caregiving in Singapore.
#3 — Listen to the people and involve stakeholders
More than any system or technology, all four panelists unanimously agreed that people are the most crucial component to catalyse change. The first and foremost are the patients themselves — we need to listen to them, empower them with information and infrastructure support, understand what they need and provide solutions accordingly. Secondly — the caregivers. People need to be trained on caregiving. Whether it is family or someone else in the community, education and training becomes necessary to seamless integrated care. Lastly — involving other stakeholders like insurance companies. Wan Ling from Caregivers Asia voiced how insurance companies need to make some of their solutions more relevant, so costs of home care and tertiary care can be managed more effectively.
AUDIENCE WORKSHOP — COLLECTIVE UNDERSTANDING OF BARRIERS AND GAPS AS WELL AS CO-CREATING SOLUTIONS
After an engaging fireside chat, the audience members were broken into 5 different groups. Each group was given a patient and caregiver persona, that represented different stages of the health journey, with their problem situation. The members of the group were to collectively brainstorm about the barriers and gaps their patient or caregiver faces and co-create some collaborative solutions that will address their issues. The 5 stages of the personas were — prevention, early diagnosis, chronic disease management, frail and home-bound, and children well-being. Over the last 60 minutes of the event, everyone in the room immersed themselves into the workshops with each of the panelists joining a group.
WHY THE WORKSHOP?
The idea behind getting the collective mind together was twofold:
- To immerse people in the many stages and stakeholders of integrated care, and allow them to better understand the unique challenges and possible solutions; and
- More importantly to experience the process of co-creating solutions. There is no one stakeholder that will be able to provide integrated care and increasingly it means for each of us to come forward to become a part of the solution.
CAPTURING SOME HIGHLIGHTS ACROSS THE 5 DIFFERENT DISCUSSIONS
Barriers/Gaps:
- Irrespective of the persona, one of the major psycho-socio barrier or challenge was the taboo around sickness and ill-health. Whether it is the peer group, the society, or sometimes even the close community, a lot of pressure is exerted on the patient or caregiver to maintain an image of being well. The fear of rejection drives many patients and caregivers into a stressful state of isolation.
- Especially for the chronic and home-bound, one big barrier is the access to infrastructure and funding. Hospital waiting times are sometimes too long; public transport is not easily accessible; the patient sometimes falls through the cracks because they do not fit a certain profile to be funded; professional home care is not easily affordable or accessible.
- In the area of knowledge and awareness, almost all the groups agreed that more information and support needs to be provided. Patients and caregivers are not empowered adequately with information be it about the funding, points of healthcare access, their own patient journey, support groups, or other support facilities.
Solutions:
A great number of ideas were generated in each group. The solutions were also assigned to one of the three key stakeholder — Public, Private and People
“I was encouraged by the willingness of people to share openly and honestly in our small group. The value of people from different walks of life and from all three sectors contributing their experiences and ideas generated diverse and thoughtful outputs.” ~Christy Davis, Asia P3 Hub
Here are just some of the solutions that emerged:
#1 — Make access to funding and infrastructure easier
Relevant insurance schemes, flexible public sector funding, incentives for preventive checks, subsidised and appropriate telehealth, digital devices and access, subsidised mental health solutions, personalised non-institutional care — all of these and more, focused on building new solutions and changing old ones so more and more patients and caregivers can find the means to good care.
#2 — Peer support and community support
Whether it is for children suffering from mental health issues, caregivers of chronic patients, or home-bound elderly people — everyone needs a shoulder to lean on and a group to take strength from. Lot of solutions involved forming peer support groups either online or offline to sustain the mental health and well-being of the patients and caregivers. The community whether religious or family or neighbourhood, plays a critical role in supporting and easing the journey of the patient or caregiver especially when moving from one stage to the next.
#3 — Training and awareness
Training for patients themselves, training for caregivers, training for different stages, training through an app, training in the community centres, seamless training from the hospital to home — were some of the many solutions in this area. Empowering people with know-how is a means to help them deal with their situation better and there was a consensus that the more of this there is, the better!
It was one of those discussions that simply did not end. The participants stayed on long after the event wrapped up to discuss, network and share ideas on how to collaborate to build great integrated care.
We are hopeful of seeing some of these solutions grow and take life in the future. A few participants put down their names to champion some of the proposed solutions and will collaborate with partners to make them a reality.
“The complexity of integrated care challenges will not be solved by one person or organisation. It will require the collective efforts and partnership of people and organisation with one vision. Through this platform, we wanted to explore how social enterprises can play an integral role in the crossroads of health x social”. ~Erwin Chan, Capacity Building, raiSE.
ABOUT THE EVENT SERIES
Bridges & Boats is an interactive conversation for the multi-sector partnership ecosystem in Singapore. It provides fresh perspectives and new angles for navigating complexity, focusing on mindset shifts and practical skills needed to accelerate and encourage successful partnerships that achieve sustainability and innovation. Bridges & Boats acknowledges that many complex challenges in the world today cannot be solved by one sector alone. Business, government, academia and non-governmental organisations working together can harness the power of diverse resources to tackle the problems we face.
The first event in the series, A Fresh Conversation on Partnering: The Need for Bridges & Boats explored the concept of bridges and boats, and how the concept can be extended to bring value to multi-sector collaborations. The second event, A Fresh Conversation: Technology for Social Impact, looked into how technology and social media are being used to deliver social impact, essentials for organisations to collaborate across sectors and disciplines, and set out to ‘demystify’ blockchain technology.
To get more info on similar activities and future events, you can subscribe to the raiSE newsletter and the Asia P3 Hub newsletter.
The author of this article, Mala Rajpal, is the Founder & CEO of Left Right. A marketing & business development professional with over a decade of experience across Singapore & India, Mala quit the private sector 4 years ago to focus on the social sector full time. Passionate about making social good organisations more efficient & evolved, she wishes to help more organisations tell their stories better, spread their work far & wide, and talk to their stakeholders feeling confident about their present & future. Click here to connect with her on LinkedIn.
