Before agreeing to do a session, consider if this is a good fit for the community.

PACC Mapping helps groups in a community accelerate working together to rapidly develop ways to support service gaps. It is not designed for small teams or detailed implementation planning and logistics.

We have broken this down into a few questions for you:

Questions to assess PACC Mapping Fit for a Community

Are there clear local primary care service gaps that the community is trying to address?

Consider the communities and populations near you - they might benefit from a PACC Mapping workshop. You may already have some ideas. If so, engage with them to find out more.

Is there a PACC Mapping Host for the Community Workshop?

If you are not already engaged with the community, you will want a host.

Consider who might have existing relationships with key stakeholders within your communities and populations of interest. PACC Mapping only works well if you can connect into the planning process and get a broad group of decision makers around the table. For that, you either have to know the community yourself or have a well connected and keen local Community Engagement Lead. This person can come from many places (e.g., primary care, community care, public health, local government, First Nations).

If there isn’t a clear host, it is hard to move forward with any session.

Is the Community Ready for a PACC Session?

With the local host, determine if there is a relevant group of stakeholders that have the capacity and might be willing to engage in a PACC Mapping session geared towards the local priority you have identified. This might be an existing planning table where you can run PACC Mapping. It is very important that you can build on some relationships in the community.

If the community isn’t ready to have the discussion, pre-work can happen by the host and a PACC session can be revisited when there is more engagement or more capacity.

If you have positive answers for those three questions, you are probably good to move ahead and start prepping in earnest.

When to pick PACC Mapping and when not to.

To review, PACC Mapping is not always the right tool for the job - and that is OK. Even after your initial readiness assessment and early engagement, you might find that the community is not a good fit or not ready. If there are flags (e.g., no clear local Community Engagement Lead, no table or set of working relationships already established) then PACC Mapping may not be the best next step.

While PACC Mapping can be engaging and help to build relationships, it might be a useful second step if the community needs to do a bit more pre-work.

**PACC Mapping would be most beneficial where:

  1. There are identifiable barriers to equitable access to PACC services in an area of focus.
  2. There is flexibility within the community to change / adapt / enhance existing programs and services.
  3. There are social, systemic, cultural and/or historical concerns that create inequities.
  4. PCN Planning or Implementation is underway.

PACC Mapping would be less helpful where:

  1. Local stakeholders feel they are at capacity and cannot engage (introducing a new-to-them approach might leave a community feeling drained or disrupted).
  2. There is disagreement among stakeholders with regards to the priority focus (while PACC Mapping can invite stakeholders to collaborate on issues and service gaps, there needs to be buy-in to get them to the workshop).
  3. Existing programs and services are already functioning optimally (i.e., to the level that stakeholders don’t feel compelled to meet right now or there is no gap or need).

If you establish that the community is likely a good fit, then you can engage a bit more and start to prepare.

NEXT STEP: Prepare Your Session