Advancing Integrated Community-Based Primary Health Care

With primary care reform underway across jurisdictions, this session explored how to move from aspiration to practice in building integrated primary care systems. Speakers and participants reflected on the reality that while there is strong alignment around the importance of team-based, person-centred care, implementation remains uneven and often fragmented across regions.

The discussion highlighted that integrated primary care is not a single model but a set of relationships, capabilities, and conditions. Examples shared across jurisdictions pointed to the importance of locally grounded solutions, strong interprofessional teams, and meaningful connections between primary care, community organisations, social supports, and Indigenous-led services. Participants emphasised that integration happens through trust, shared purpose, and continuity, not only through structures or policy design.

A recurring theme was the gap between policy ambition and lived experience. While many promising initiatives are underway, they are often disconnected, difficult to scale, or insufficiently supported by enabling infrastructure such as data sharing, workforce capacity, and sustained investment. The conversation underscored the need to learn across jurisdictions and to create spaces for collective sense-making rather than parallel reform efforts.

The session also surfaced the importance of equity and community voice. Integrated primary care must be shaped with and by the people and communities it serves, particularly those who experience the greatest barriers to access. This includes recognising the leadership of Indigenous communities and the value of culturally grounded approaches to care.

Together, participants explored what it will take to strengthen the foundations of integrated primary care in Canada, moving toward a shared understanding of what good looks like in practice and how to support its spread.