In 2008, the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) launched a twopronged public and stakeholder engagement process to inform the development of a framework for its Mental Health Strategy for Canada initiative. This case study assesses the design, implementation and effectiveness of this engagement strategy (Regional Dialogues and Online Consultation – RDOC). Additionally, this article examines how the consultation results impacted the Commission’s framework document – Toward Recovery & Well-Being: A Framework for a Mental Health Strategy for Canada. The sources for this case study include a review of selected public participation literature, key informant interviews with MHCC senior staff and the public documents associated with the MHCC consultations.

The paper was written by Tristan Eclarin as part of his University of Victoria MPA internship with Ascentum and the views expressed do not purport to represent the views of the MHCC or Ascentum.

Share Your Story, Shape Your Care community online dialogue

Northwestern Ontario is a unique place with a special set of health care challenges.  People living in the region have poorer health than anywhere else in Ontario, and have the furthest to travel to access health services.  It’s a population of a few hundred thousand people spread across an area the size of France.

The North West Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) manages how heath services are delivered and knew they needed to listen to and involve local communities in setting a care plan for the future.  That’s why they decided to work with Ascentum.  The resulting partnership led to Share Your Story, Shape Your Care – a game-changing online engagement initiative that received the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2)’s inaugural Innovation of the Year award for 2009.

Ascentum built a suite of online and in-person tools to involve local patients, health care workers and stakeholders.   These included an online deliberative Choicebook™, a stories and ideas sharing platform and a creative community Conversation Guide to empower people to host their own dialogues on local health care solutions at home, at work or in their neighbourhoods.

By the time Share Your Story, Shape Your Care had ended, the LHIN had:

• Heard from over 800 people across Northwestern Ontario
• Learned more about patients’ and health professionals’ experiences with the health care system
• Identified clear public values and priorities for the future of local health care.
• Gathered 100s of new insightful ideas on how to provide services differently and more effectively

Share Your Story, Shape Your Care allowed the North West LHIN to develop a health services plan that more closely reflected the values of local communities and their health care needs.

And, it further enhanced their reputation as a government agency that listens closely to public views and gives them close consideration when making tough decisions.

Choicebook
The Choicebook was an interactive experience that allowed participants to provide informed perspectives on key issues, through facts, scenarios and background information. It collected by qualitative and quantitative data that was straightforward and highly accurate.

Stories/Ideas
This tool allowed participants to share their own experiences and their own solutions directly with the North West LHIN.  People could also choose to make their story or idea public, posted in near-realtime after review for appropriateness.

Conversation Guide
This tool was designed to foster small participant-led and organized group dialogues in communities across Northwestern Ontario, with simple steps to send the results back to the LHIN.  Different participant and facilitator versions helped people run moderate their own conversations, even if they had never done so before.

To learn more about this project, please contact us.

Moose FM 93.5 Interview with Joseph Peters of Ascentum

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CBC Interview with Joseph Peters of Ascentum

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Joseph Peters and Manon Abud, with commentaries by Kathleen McNutt and Colin McKay

Study

Download “E-Consultation: Enabling Democracy between Elections”

Media Release

Download IRPP Media Release

Podcast

Download IRPP Podcast in an MP3 format

Globe and Mail Article “It’s time to e-consult our citizens” by Joseph Peters

Read a full version of the article here

Engaging Canadians in a Dialogue to Set the Goals for a Pan-Canadian Mental Health Strategy: Stakeholder Dialogues and Online Public & Stakeholder Consultation

The Challenge

In 2007, the federal government, in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments, announced the creation of the Mental Health Commission of Canada – an organization mandated to be the catalyst for the development and implementation of a mental health strategy for Canada, one that will ultimately lead to a deeply transformed mental health system.

Canada’s lack of a national mental health strategy is in part  a result of our constitutional reality: health care and social services are largely the responsibility of provincial and territorial governments. Given this fact, the Commission though tasked with leading the creation of a mental health strategy for Canada, does not have the authority to implement or evaluate it. Consider therefore the Commission’s challenge: the creation of a consensus-based framework to guide the implementation of a comprehensive, pan-Canadian strategy for mental health promotion, prevention and treatment… while working within the parameters of  Canada’s complex constitutional context and history, and given a vast array of competing interests for limited resources.

The Approach

As it embarked on this journey, the Commission felt it was critically important to engage as wide a range of people as possible, including: people living with mental health problems and illnesses, their families and caregivers, mental health service providers, researchers and policy experts. It also wanted to connect with  people who are concerned about mental health issues, whether or not they are currently involved with the mental health system.

To this end, Ascentum collaborated with the Commission to design and deliver a series of 15 regional stakeholder dialogues, along with a parallel online consultation process open to all individuals and organizations with an interest in this issue:

Regional dialogues

Ascentum designed, facilitated and reported on 15 full-day dialogue sessions, which brought together a diverse mix of individuals and stakeholders, including two sessions dedicated to delving deeper into the specific perspectives, needs and concerns of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples (through their national leadership) and of health and social/community services professionals (through their national professional associations).

These dialogues were designed to provide participants with an opportunity to learn about the proposed strategy Framework (which outlined 8 proposed goals for the strategy) in plenary and small groups, and to provide concrete feedback on what they liked, were concerned about and wanted to change/add to the Framework. The facilitators also used electronic voting keypads to test agreement with each proposed goal and with the Framework as whole  at the beginning and end of the day, to measure shifts in perspectives. A summary of the day’s discussion was posted on the Commission’s blog at the end of each session.

Innovative online participation website: public and stakeholders

Ascentum developed and hosted a customized participation website on its dialoguecircles.com platform. First, an online workbookTM provided a brief overview of the Commission’s proposed Framework and allowed participants to react to each goal through a mix of close-ended and open-ended questions. The online workbook also included pre- and post-test questions to measure shifts in views on the 8 proposed goals as a result of completing the online workbook. Members of the general public and representatives of stakeholder groups completed the same online workbook to facilitate a comparative analysis of their respective perspectives.

Second, each audience was offered the opportunity to provide “free form” qualitative comments -  in the form of personal stories and ideas for members of the public and more formal comments and suggestions for stakeholder organizations. Public participants could choose to register or participate anonymously, and could elect to share their stories and ideas on the website for other visitors to read or submit them for analysis only.

Participation Website: Online Workbook:

Participation Website: Shared Stories

The Results

Over 450 people, from coast to coast to coast, participated in the Commission’s Regional Dialogues, between January and April 2009. In addition, over 1,700 members of the general public and 300 stakeholder groups availed themselves of the opportunity to share their views with the Commission online between February 11 and March 31, 2009, completing some 1,800 online workbooks and providing over 465,00 words of comments (just a few pages short of “War and Peace”!). Moreover, in their evaluations of the process, the majority of participants expressed their willingness to remain engaged in the Commission’s work moving forward.

The Commission’s commitment to active listening was demonstrated by the extent to which it revised the final Framework document to reflect the weight and direction of public and stakeholder input: the Framework document was substantially modified to reflect what they heard, including the insertion of a vision statement, a reframing of the goal statements, the redefinition of key concepts and the elimination of one goal. Most importantly, as it engages in the most difficult portion of this journey – defining HOW to achieve the goals set out in the revised Framework – the Mental Health Commission of Canada can leverage the relationships and trust it has begun to build through this process  – all with a view to catalyze the change hoped for by the one in four Canadians who live with or have experienced mental health problems and illnesses.

Public health is in the middle of a paradigm shift.

SARS, Asian Bird Flu, H1N1 and other global pandemics are spreading more rapidly than at any time in human history because of globalization and travel.   The effects of these diseases have been severe and the public is growing increasingly concerned about their health and safety.

From these and other disease outbreak experiences, governments have learned that they need to change the way they respond to these new health threats.

Their clinical responses need to be more coordinated, flexible and scalable.  However, just as important, governments need to communicate in new and innovative ways to inform their publics and enable people to make informed choices about protecting their health.

Social media provides agencies with powerful new ways of leveraging social networks to spread health information to members of the public and other stakeholders.  Tools like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Blogger can help forward-looking governments to proactively take critical health advice to “where people are” on social media rather than leaving people to find information on their own – often from inaccurate or unreliable sources.

That’s why the Public Health Agency of Canada decided to work with Ascentum to design and build a strategic social media presence.

The results have been nothing short of powerful.  In a matter of weeks, 1000s of Canadians become “fans” of the Agency on Facebook, receiving real-time updates on H1N1 when they most needed it.  Others have used the Agency’s innovative H1N1 Information Centre to share personalized information on the virus.  And, the Agency has recently launched the first branded YouTube channel of any government organization in Canada.

We’re proud of the Public Health Agency of Canada for their passion for using social media and are proud of what our partnership with them has been able to achieve.  By having personalized health advice shared through their social networks, Canadians are able to make more informed decisions to protect their health.

Keep reading to learn more about Ascentum’s social media services for the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Social Media Strategy

Ascentum worked with the Public Health Agency of Canada to create its first social media strategy.  In fact, this was one of the first social media strategies developed by any Government of Canada organization.

It’s easy to start using social media; it’s harder, but more important, to design an appropriate strategy for how your organization wants to use social media.  Ascentum helped the Public Health Agency of Canada think strategically about how to get the most out of its social media approach.

Together, we spent time thinking carefully about who the Agency wanted to engage through social media, for what purposes, on what issues and involving which tools.  The strategy also allows them to gather data and measure success.

Facebook Information Centre

Ascentum and the Public Health Agency of Canada understood that, with over 12 million Canadians as active users, Facebook presented a powerful vehicle to disseminate timely health advice to members of the public.

Using its in-depth expertise on Facebook, Ascentum designed and built a customize H1N1 Information Centre for the Agency.  This made health information available in personalized “bit size” pieces that people could share with their friend on Facebook.  There was a mini-factbook for pregnant women and another for parents of children in daycares or schools.  There were even quizbooks where people could test their knowledge of H1N1.

In addition, visitors could get regular news updates on Facebook as “fans” of the Agency’s presence or via viral messaging shared through social networks.  This has helped the Public Health Agency of Canada build relationships and grow its community.

To learn more about our social media work with the Public Health Agency of Canada, please contact us.

Some people think that Facebook is just a place for people to play and share silly status updates – not to achieve anything serious or productive….

We disagree and formed a partnership with some of Canada’s leading public affairs and media organizations to see if Facebook could be used to foster dialogue on important policy questions.

What we found through Speak Up for Change has revolutionized public participation.

Speak Up for Change was an Ascentum-created Facebook application.

It invited people to learn about Canada’s energy challenge and to decide how, if they were a decision maker, they would solve our energy problems in the future.  Beyond top-of-mind, kneejerk responses, the online Choicebook gave participants the opportunity to make the tough choices necessary to find solutions.

Hundreds of Canadians have already taken part and spoken up for change.  On the application’s Facebook page, people have stayed involved and formed part of a growing online community.  Some joined as friends or fans of the Speak Up for Change app.  Others have returned to post further thoughts, ideas, links and experiences on the application’s wall.

So, what did Speak Up for Change tell us about Facebook and online participation?

Speak Up for Change underlined Ascentum’s experience that people want to participate in dialogue on decisions that affect them.  But, they want to take part in engaging ways and involve their friends.

That’s why Ascentum used its content and creative expertise to build an application that was attention–grabbing, interactive and fun to complete.  The Choicebook experience provided people with the key facts, perspectives and arguments they needed to make an informed choice about their future.

Who says public participation cant be fun?

Speak Up for Change is an ongoing social and technology experiment.

It’s already shown the future of online public participation and demonstrated that Facebook can be used successfully as a platform to foster dialogue between people on questions that matter.

To hear more about Speak Up for Change and about what we are learning about social media and public participation, please contact us.