Background to Primary Health Care

The National Primary Health Care Awareness Strategy

The team approach is about the team of health care providers working together to improve the continuity of care, reduce duplication and ensure individuals have access to appropriate health professionals. Patients/clients are a part of the team, as well, and are involved in, and empowered to make, decisions about their own health.

Primary health care is about improved sharing of information between health providers and expanded access to information for Canadians using the health system or seeking health advice. It's about using tools like electronic health records and diagnostic instruments to improve the quality, access and co-ordination of health information.

Primary health care is about access, and ensuring that Canadians have greater access to the right services when and where they are needed. It recognizes that Canadians need advice, information and care outside of regular office hours.

Healthy living encompasses prevention, the management of chronic illness, encouraging support for self-care and the idea that factors outside of the health system can influence individual and community health. It's about keeping us well, rather than just treating us after we've become sick.

For more information on the National Primary Health Care Awareness Strategy, please visit www.primaryhealthcare.ca

Principles of Primary Health Care

The following five principles were first articulated at the World Health Organization Conference in Alma Ata in 1978.

Accessibility - means access to health care regardless of geographic location. This presents a huge challenge in places like Saskatchewan where we have a large land mass and a relatively sparse population.

Access also is about appropriateness: getting the right help from the right health care provider at the right time and place - to prevent problems or deal with them before they get really bad.

Public Participation - means involving the public in decisions about their own health, and identifying the needs of their community. This principle also means that diversity is respected and that health care is designed to be flexible and responsive.

Effective Health Promotion and Disease Prevention - means things like health education, nutrition, immunization, mother and child health care. School programs come into play here. Again it means preventing problems from happening in the first place. We believe this principle should be included in every aspect of health care, whether you are seeing your doctor for a check up, in an emergency room with a broken limb, or having your gall bladder removed.

Appropriate Technology - In Primary Health Care we don't need a lot of fancy diagnostic equipment, but what we do need is a way to share information and knowledge.

Intersectoral Co-operation - Collaboration with other community services to address the "determinants of health" that impact a person's health and dependence on the health care system.