Research & Projects
What We Do
- Create processes and infrastructure to study and increase value in Quintuple Aims
- Design, test and pilot new interventions, including realist and pragmatic research and evaluation studies
- Document the implementation, growth, and evolution of health and wellness friendly community efforts over multiple years
- By partnering with traditionally underserved communities, engaging volunteers and youth representative of their communities, offering services in different languages, customizing support according to community needs and priorities, and paying attention to all social determinants of health, we strive to reduce health inequities.
Projects
Promising Practices
HWFC initiatives benefit from using some or all of the following practices (1) social health screening and personalized risk prediction tools; (2) navigation, resource mobilization and untethered holistic care pathway interventions that are person-directed, goal-oriented, and community-based; (3) prevention-focused outreach and surveillance, with partnerships to reach the most vulnerable; (4) wellness-oriented group programs – public education, peer support, cross-cultural, etc.; (5) use of person-reported quality of life assessment, outcome and experience measures, with big data platforms built into routine delivery; (6) AI and feedback-informed community collaboration to address gaps and improve equity and (7) student learning internships and mobilization of intergenerational volunteers.
Research Themes
Working with community groups and health service agencies, current and planned studies explore the following topics:
- Program results: Feasibility, acceptability, experience, effectiveness, and cost benefit evaluation from multiple perspectives
- Quality of life: Effect on self-reported holistic health and wellness outcomes (physical, mental, social and spiritual health)
- Equity: Benefit to individuals and groups on a spectrum from healthy development, aging, caregiving, chronic disease, frailty, serious illness, end of life, loss and grief – with a special focus on social determinants (people experiencing food, housing or income insecurity, low literacy); other forms of stigma (race, culture, gender, orientation, language); traditionally underserved groups and those who live in socially deprived environments
- Health service integration: Improved transitions, integration of care and wrap around support, and reduction of unnecessary use of health resources across the life course – including end of life and grief stages
- Health (health status, morbidity and mortality): Effect on the prevention, delay or mitigation of disease onset, disease burden and/or premature mortality; relationship and magnitude of social disconnection risk to poor health outcomes
- Community capacity: Changes in awareness, attitudes, behaviour, community culture, capacity for collective action, intergenerational and intercultural efforts, and other emergent forms of social innovation and collaborative action
- Public health: Emergent public health actions and how they work to build healthy public policy, create supportive environments for health, strengthen community action for health, develop personal skills, and re-orient health services
- Our studies involve realist, developmental, effectiveness, implementation science, program evaluation, and pragmatic RCT methods. Approaches used include experimental and quasi-experimental, predictive analytics, AI/computer science, and mixed methods. Impact analyses include Wellness adjusted life years, Health adjusted life years, and ROI (cost benefit, effectiveness, and efficiency).
For further information on published studies click here
