Integration of Primary Health Care and Public Health During a Public Health Emergency

We have provided a detailed evaluation of how collaboration between an Ontario public health unit and its primary care providers facilitated an optimal response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.Family health teams (integrated, interdisciplinary teams that provide a range of care options) provided flu assessment centers, with public health as a partner providing infection control advice, funding, coordination, antiviral medication, clinical care guidelines, supplemental nurse staffing, and arrangement of communication strategies with the public.The family health team structure offers a new capacity for timely, coordinated, and comprehensive response to public health emergencies, in partnership with public health, and provides a promising new direction for healthcare organization.The H1N1 pandemic of 2009 killed nearly 13 000 people worldwide by year’s end.1 More specifically, H1N1 had a substantial impact on Canada’s health care system, resulting in 8596 hospitalizations, 1446 intensive care unit admissions, and 426 deaths.2 In just nine months in the province of Ontario, emergency departments (EDs) received roughly 140 000 more patients with flu-like symptoms than they had in previous years, and the national cost of responding to H1N1 has been estimated at more than $2 billion.3 In southeastern Ontario’s Kingston, Frontenac, and Lennox & Addington (KFLA) Health Unit, the new primary care provider (PCP) structure facilitated a partnership between PCPs and public health and an optimal response to the 2009 pandemic. The improved PCP structure allowed a timely and comprehensive response to pandemic H1N1 by providing enhanced coordination, communication, and collaboration among PCPs and with public health and offered a new capacity for ongoing partnerships between PCPs and public health.