Sonia Hsiung and Natasha Beaudin: How Connection and Belonging Can Change the Culture of Our Health System

When HIROC put a call out at the 2023 Alliance for Healthier Communities Conference for changemakers, the community delivered. We heard about some amazing healthcare changemakers across the province of Ontario – people like Sonia Hsiung and Natasha Beaudin, and the social prescribing initiative they have been involved in.

 

Sonia is with the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing and the Canadian Red Cross, and Natasha works with the Alliance for Healthier Communities.

 

On this latest episode, Philip De Souza sits down with Sonia and Natasha to talk about how the social prescribing pilot started with just 11 sites working in collaboration with providers and clients. They share the ripple effect the initiative has had in community health across Ontario, Canada and internationally – how work like this is changing the culture of our health system towards connection and belonging.

 

Quotables

“I saw how it improved our model in so many ways. So, it helped us really integrate our work. Helped make those connections between the clinical side of things and our health promotion side.” – NB

“It really was work that was already happening in community health centres and other Alliance members. And it was more around building a bit more of that intentionality, the structure pathway, the measurements, within our system.” – SH

“There was just so much creativity within each centre as well, where the teams ended up supporting each other.” – SH

“I think part of how this work has been so successful is because everyone sees themselves in the pathway, everyone sees themselves as a contributor…” – NB

“That ability to track outcomes were just powerful. We saw an overall decrease in people’s sense of loneliness by 49%, and that is huge – that was over just a nine-month period.” – SH

“And what was really important, as an outcome of this pathway, is that people said they felt that they were seen and heard as whole persons, even when they were in their clinical appointments. And that made such a shift in people’s sense of self-confidence, their sense of purpose, their sense of ‘yes I can manage my own health’.” – SH

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Alliance for Healthier Communities

• Canadian Red Cross

• Centretown Community Health Centre

• Cormac Russell: The Connected Community

• National Health Service

• Older Adult Centres’ Association of Ontario

• Public Health Agency of Canada

• Rexdale Community Health Centre

• Social Prescribing Network

• The Ontario Caregiver Organization

• 211

 

Access More Interviews with Healthcare Leaders at HIROC.com/podcast

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