Health Care Navigation
The Chatham-Kent Ontario Health Team (CKOHT) is advancing navigation services within Chatham-Kent to streamline access to healthcare and social services, focusing on three primary areas:
Provider-to-Provider Navigation:
This effort involves building partnerships across healthcare and social sectors, ensuring that frontline providers have centralized access to information about local resources. CKOHT has established a Navigation Community of Practice (CoP) for sharing knowledge and improving standardized processes such as referral pathways and communication between providers, which helps minimize service silos.
Self-Navigation:
The CKOHT developed an online “Find Services” page for community members, centralizing navigation resources in one place. This page directs individuals to appropriate services such as Health & Social Services, Cancer Screening, BridgeCare and MobileCare services. If a community member is unable to find what they are looking for and would like further support navigating Health and Social Services, there is a self-referral option available to connect with a 211 Community Navigator to better understand what programs and services are available to them.
Supported Navigation:
Aiming to offer live, person-to-person navigation support, the CKOHT is exploring options for sustained partnerships with existing resources, like the 211 Community Connection Team. Supported navigation is designed to provide “warm transfers” to ensure a person’s story follows them through each service handoff, reducing the need for them to retell their story repeatedly.
Lambton College, Chatham-Kent OHT and Sarnia Lambton OHT Collaborative Community Research Project
“Advancing Healthier Communities Through Transformative Social Prescribing Models for Inclusive Health and Wellness Benefit”
This project aims to advance social prescribing, an innovative approach to community wellness that addresses the social determinants of health such as isolation and belonging, through non-medical supports and services. Through this project, we will be working to co-create an innovative model for social prescribing that will suit the unique local contexts and integrate into existing infrastructures to improve patient outcomes and health equity in our communities.
