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Community Health

WORKING WITH OUR ONTARIO HEALTH TEAM PARTNERS TO DELIVER CRITICAL COMMUNITY SUPPORT DURING COVID-19

Group of five WoodGreen staff members standing socially distanced outside a building.
Group of five WoodGreen staff members standing socially distanced outside a building.
From the Newcomer Program and Settlement Services team: Mohan Doss, Nadjib Alamyar, Irum Nazir, Tharnya Sivanithy, Sarah Ferguson

In December 2019, the Honourable Christine Elliott, formally announced East Toronto Health Partners (ETHP) as one of the first 24 Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) in the province, to implement a new model of organizing and delivering health care that better connects patients and providers in their communities to improve patient outcomes.

“This is an exciting time for health care in Ontario as we finally break down the long-standing barriers that have prevented care providers from working directly with each other to support patients throughout their health care journey,” said Elliott. “Together with our health care partners, the Toronto East Ontario Health Team will play an essential role in delivering on our commitment to end hallway health care and build a connected and sustainable public health care system centred around the needs of patients.”

“The East OHT model allows health and social service providers to work collaboratively together  to provide more seamless connected care for our communities,” said Ashnoor Rahim, VP of Community Care at WoodGreen. “We were able to assist our wonderful primary care partners and local hospital (MGH) to bring mobile COVID-19 testing into neighbourhoods like Taylor Massey quickly, because we could identify a need and leverage relationships to ensure the community understood why this was so important, and ultimately participate.”

Using a collaborative approach, WoodGreen’s InterProfessional Care (IPC) team, Michael Garron Hospital, The Neighbourhood Organization, South Riverdale Community Health Centre, and other community agencies and health care professionals integrated a health delivery model into action with amazing results, including:

  • delivering more than 6,000 masks to residents
  • sharing critical health information about COVID-19 in multiple languages
  • brought neighbourhood mobile COVID-19 on-site testing