Table 4 Policy Recommendations for Health and Social Service Integration

• Incentivize and prioritize a step-wise approach to cross-sector, mutually-beneficial, community-driven partnerships that use broad longitudinal stakeholder engagement to establish agreements for shared governance, accountability, funding, data, program implementation. This step-wise approach to achieving non-hierarchical partnership will require cross-sector training, but includes

o Step 1: Identify and understand individual partners’ values, priorities, goals, funding streams and care delivery processes

o Step 2: Align and streamline processes to create shared accountability and mutually beneficial return on investments

o Step 3: Co-create and implement integrative programming design and evaluation with an emphasis on incorporating partners priorities, including measures demonstrating whether or not there is a reduction in duplicative work and cross-sector cost savings

o Step 4: Co-evaluate the initiative with the aim to improve the partnership and enhance bidirectional learning and knowledge

• Enhance existing cross-sector partnerships by

o Mandating use of stakeholder engagement principles to communicate and outline non-duplicative and integrative programmatic goals, plans, implementation, and evaluation process

o Building capacity through investments in CBOs organizational capacity, establishment of a universal consent form, and building an information technology platform that can be used across sectors and data reporting system 

• Increase funding for programs that integrate medical care and social care and align with other relevant sectors (e.g. agriculture, transportation, etc.) to provide more comprehensive funding for the resources need for specific programming (i.e. housing, benefits, access to health/mental health care)