9.4 How To Collaborate Across Regions To Extract Best Practices, Learn From Mistakes And Complement One Another's Work

Health Canada's regional champions of the population health approach have been working toward mobilization for only a very short while, in terms of the long calendar of social change. Yet, each of the initiatives has learned a great deal about all the elements of population health mobilization practice and about ways in which understandings of the theory behind it could be improved. Moreover, all the initiatives are eager to share their learnings with others in order to validate and extend the collective knowledge. Many more initiatives exist that were not part of these case studies: surely just as much learning can be derived from those initiatives as well. It seems therefore imperative to ensure that the knowledge gained from these experimentations be gathered, distilled and shared.

The most promising model for extracting best practices, learning from mistakes, and complementing each other's work would have to come from the intersectoral collaboration initiatives themselves. Learning from what has been learned already, this would involve:

• Like-minded people coming together regularly to share what they have learned. We have learned from these case studies that who is involved is very important, that those involved do not necessarily have to hold key roles in any health sector, and indeed that the process of sharing does not necessarily have to be seen as a health-based initiative to further population health goals.

• The sharing occurring in an atmosphere of candour and trust. We have learned from these case studies that certain conditions may facilitate the development of such an atmosphere, including supporting the making and sharing of mistakes, and leaving organizational allegiances at the meeting room door in the interests of population health.

• Opportunities for coming together being created, supported and institutionalized, i.e., having adequate, permanent sources of support and coordination.

Because particular population health mobilization initiatives across the country may share interests in specific issues or approaches, targeted approaches to sharing about these would maximize mutual benefit. For example, issues that seemed to come up often across initiatives included working with regional health authorities, working with excluded minority populations, getting other federal departments to include population health in their strategic planning, reconciling competing ideologies for community development and developing appropriate evaluation frameworks. Each of these could be the subject of cross-regional consolidations of learnings and knowledge development.

In conclusion, the main learning from these case studies is that regional mobilization of population health is happening; sometimes slowly, occasionally with difficulties, but often in a way from which there is no turning back. As one partner said, "It's the way we do business now."

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