Academic and public health partnership creates data bridge to promote information sharing during COVID-19 pandemic

Clinicians and administrators in Alberta, Canada, built a data bridge between primary care and public health stakeholders to improve the province’s community-based response to the pandemic. The authors traced the data bridge’s foundations to: policy commitments to the Patient Medical Home model as well as organizational and governance structures that actively drew together primary care and non-primary care stakeholders. Those commitments and structures opened the possibility for champions to emerge, trust to evolve, and integrative improvisation of health care practices to take place. Without a functional and well-established interface between independent primary care and the central health system, the authors argue that both pandemic responses, and everyday primary care integration efforts are likely to suffer.

Building a Data Bridge: Policies, Structures, and Governance Integrating Primary Care Into the Public Health Response to COVID-19

Myles Leslie, PhD, MJ, MA, et al
School of Public Policy and Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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