Best Practice Forum: Successes, Lessons Learned and Next Steps

This Champions Information Sharing Webinar is designed for health-care providers and students who would like to learn about how the public health branch at the Regional Municipality of York (York Region Public Health) implemented a Best Practice Forum.

The forum entitled, “Envisioning Possibilities” raised the visibility of evidence-informed best practices implemented within the public health branch throughout its programs and services. This forum highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to ensure successful best practice implementation, evaluation and sustainability planning. This event featured staff-led presentations and provided strategic networking opportunities for the participants and attendees.

The objectives of this presentation are to share successes, lessons learned and evaluation results from the Best Practices Forum at the York Region Public Health.

The Best Practices Form celebrated successes in best practice implementation and served as a knowledge exchange and networking opportunity for teams across the public health branch.

The Best Practices Forum had three primary objectives:

1. Foster engagement between staff and the current best practices being implemented. 
2. Raise the profile of best practices and those who are diligently working on implementing them.
3. Highlight the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration to ensure successful best practice implementation evaluation and sustainability planning.      

The Best Practice Forum spanned two days and had a total of nine poster presentations and seven Pecha Kucha presentations that discussed various best practice initiatives. 

The following are a list of the posters and Pecha Kucha presentations:

Poster Presentations

1. Family Violence and Abuse Prevention Online Curriculum
2. Breast Friends Peer Support 
3. Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) Program: Supporting young moms in achieving their full potential as individuals and as new parents  
4. Leveraging Best Practice Recommendations to Enhance Substance and Tobacco Screening and Referrals for Child and Family Health Division Clients
5. Assessment and Interventions for Perinatal Depression 
6. Integrating the RNAO BPG Embracing Cultural Diversity in Health Care: Developing Cultural Competence in York Region Sexual Health Clinics 
7. Addressing SDOH: A Unique Smoking Cessation Initiative 
8. Creating an Infection Prevention and Control Best Practice Guideline to Address the Unique Needs of Public Health Professionals 
9. Timeslice Improvement Project: Using data to optimize and standardize intake processes 

Pecha Kucha Presentations

1. Video Conferencing and Breastfeeding Support
2. Undetectable = Untransmittable: Endorsing the U = U Campaign in York Region
3. The Brain Story
4. Envisioning a central LHIN-wide Fall Prevention Strategy 
5. LGBTQ2S+ Cultural Sensitivity 
6. Best Practices in Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy and Vaccine Misinformation as a Public Health Unit 
7. Public Health Nurses’ Experiences of Implementing the Bristol Breastfeeding Assessment Tool (BBAT) into Practice

Presenters:

• Simone Dykstra, RN, Nursing Practice Team, York Region Public Health
• Michelle Suarly, RN, Nursing Practice Team, York Region Public Health