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Social movements are powerful forces that have expanded, improved and advanced health-care services and outcomes to challenge inequities and change trajectories. Social movements have achieved many important victories that positively impact health-care services and outcomes. See some examples in the table below.
| Issue underlying the social movement action | Example(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Addressing stigma and inequities for people with mental illnesses globally |
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The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital, is leading a movement to drive change in mental health services (Leading a Movement to Drive Change | CAMH) |
| Advocating for rights for persons with disabilities |
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Disabled Women’s Network of Canada (DAWN) |
| Advocating for universal coverage of offloading devices |
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#ActAgainstAmputation (Wounds Canada and RNAO - (woundscanada.ca) |
| Increasing public awareness of illnesses, including linkages between social and environmental determinants of health |
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Linking cancer with commercial tobacco led to a tobacco control movement; see, for example, History of tobacco control - Canadian Cancer Society |
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Advancing patient safety and health improvement for everyone through the combined power of people and evidence |
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Healthcare Excellence Canada |
| Demanding expanded service provisions and care options for birth and for death and dying |
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Regulated midwifery care – see more at The Re-emergence of Canadian Midwifery | Birth International), Hospice and palliative care – see, for example, A-History-of-Hospice-Palliative-Care.pdf (missionhospice.bc.ca) |
| Creating person/patient-centred advocacy |
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Patients Canada |
| Pushing for increased access to drugs, including those publicly funded for communicable diseases |
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The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is a global grassroots movement fighting to end the AIDS pandemic; see ACT UP NY | End AIDS! |
| Calling to action for an end to anti-Black racism for Black nurses |
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RNAO’s Black Nurses’ Task Force Black lives still, and always will, matter – Black August and an update on RNAO’s Anti-Black Nursing Task Force | Doris' Covid-19 Blog |
| Advancing prevention and screening for health-care options |
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The breast cancer movement led to increased awareness of screening and access to routine mammograms – see, for example, #fightpink and Breast Cancer Society of Canada (charityintelligence.ca) |
| Engaging people involved in health systems to make a pledge for change |
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Change Day |
| Advancing evidence-based nursing practice and health policy through the implementation of clinical guidelines |
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Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario’s (RNAO) Action Alerts aim to advance healthy public policy in areas such as LTC Nursing Home Basic Care Guarantee (Nursing Home Basic Care Guarantee | RNAO.ca); safe injection services (QPOR 2016 - Supervised Injection Services FINAL Public.pdf (myrnao.ca) |
SOURCES: Bibby et al., 2009; Campbell, 2020; del Castillo et al., 2016; Dementia Action Alliance, 2009; Elsey, 1998; Grinspun & Bajnok, 2018; Grinspun, et al; 2018a; Herechuk et al., 2010.
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Accelerate your success: The Knowledge-to-Action Framework’s "Select, tailor, implement interventions" action cycle phase includes strategies to support a change initiative in the context of knowledge uptake and sustainability. As with the examples of social movements listed above, it is critical for change agents to intentionally choose and tailor individual and collective actions to the local context to have the greatest impact. Having this knowledge can advance change teams’ goals by highlighting key strategies which can be particularly helpful in cases where there are limited resources .
