Co-designing sustainable approaches to the citizen co-led design, execution and oversight of health-system transformations in Canada

There have been growing calls for fundamental changes across health systems in Canada from health-system and organizational leaders. These calls are driven in part by patients’ ongoing frustration with not getting timely access to the care they need, delivered to them through models of care that are responsive to their needs, values and preferences. Recently, a new set of bilateral federal/provincial/territorial (FPT) agreements were announced, with the expectation that they would address some of the most pressing health-system challenges in the country. During this same period, the CMA Health Summit, as well as a events convened by the McMaster Health Forum, yielded insights that emphasized our failure to achieve transformative change that could lead to concrete improvements for diverse Canadians and Indigenous peoples. These events also surfaced a growing interest in putting citizens in the ‘driver’s seat’ for health-system transformations. This stakeholder dialogue was hosted in partnership with the McMaster Health Leadership Academy’s National Health Fellows Program.