AZHIN: Principles of Co-Design / People as Partners: Principles of Integrated Care

Nine Pillars of Integrated Care

According to the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC), the following are core principles of integrated care:

Values and vision
Population health and local context
People as partners
Resilient communities and alliances/partnerships
Workforce capacity and capability
System wide governance and leadership
Digital solutions
Aligned payment systems
Transparency of progress, results, and impact

More Information: International Foundation for Integrated Care. (n.d.). Nine pillars of integrated care. Retrieved from https://integratedcarefoundation.org/nine-pillars-of-integrated-care.

Resources

The following resources include recent studies, systematic reviews, and authoritative resources that directly reference or operationalize the Nine Pillars in contemporary health and social care systems.

Integrated Care Systems: What is the evidence?
Systematic reviews of new models of integrated care in developed countries continue to identify core features such as integrated care pathways, multidisciplinary teams, and improved care coordination—elements that align with IFIC’s pillars.
Measuring the Impact of Integrated Care: from Principles to Real-World Impact
Discusses the significant challenges in assessing the impact of integrated care due to its complex, multifaceted nature and diverse partner perspectives.
Integrated care policy recommendations for complex multisystem long term conditions and long COVID
A large-scale consensus project identified priorities for integrated care in complex multisystem conditions, including Long COVID. The study emphasized resource allocation, access to personalized care, and structural integration across primary and specialist care, echoing IFIC’s principles of person-centeredness, care coordination, and multidisciplinary teamwork.
Research-informed decision-making for empowering integrated care system development: Co-creating innovative solutions to facilitate enhanced service provision
Describes the co-creation of integrated care models at the hospital and system level, using decision support tools to optimize workforce deployment and service innovation—direct applications of IFIC’s principles in practice.
Integrated People-Centred Health Systems (IPCHS) Standard
HSO has continued to update and implement its Integrated People-Centred Health Systems (IPCHS) Standard, which is grounded in evidence and co-designed best practices for integrated care. The standard and associated tools (assessment processes, pathway design, learning collaboratives) are actively used to operationalize IFIC-aligned principles globally.
Policy Brief: How to implement integrated care? A framework with 12 overall strategies to transform care delivery
This 2022 National Academies report examines the implementation and outcomes of integrating health and social care in the United States, highlighting the importance of cross-sector collaboration, governance, financing, and workforce strategies to improve population health and advance equity.
Always Look on the Bright Side – Lessons Learned from Another Decade of Integrating Care
This 2022 editorial in the International Journal of Integrated Care reflects on a decade of global integrated care efforts, summarizing lessons learned from 21 countries and emphasizing the need for stronger community involvement, flexible governance, and a shift from disease management to population health approaches.
Values of Integrated Care: A Systematic Review
This systematic review identifies and synthesizes 23 core values underpinning integrated care, with the most frequently cited being collaborative, co-ordinated, transparent, empowering, comprehensive, co-produced, and shared responsibility and accountability. These values reflect broad international consensus on the foundational elements necessary for effective integrated care.
Advancing Integrated Care Through EU-Funded Research
IFIC has participated in over 25 EU-funded projects in the last five years, focusing on digitally enabled integrated care, artificial intelligence, stakeholder co-creation, and care pathway redesign. These projects have directly applied and further developed IFIC’s core principles in real-world settings, producing policy briefs and lessons learned for ongoing and future integrated care initiatives

Other Authorities

The Framework for Integrated Care: a catalyst for change
Anna Freud Centre’s Framework for Integrated Care outlines evidence-informed guiding principles and practices for integrating services for children and young people in complex situations. It emphasizes collaboration across health, social care, education, and justice sectors, and is used as a template for genuine integration in high-need settings.
Understanding integrated care: a comprehensive conceptual framework based on the integrative functions of primary care
Research has proposed frameworks that combine the principles of primary care (person-focused, population-based, continuous, comprehensive, coordinated) with integrated care dimensions (clinical, professional, organizational, system, functional, and normative integration), stressing the importance of connectivity across all system levels.
Values of Integrated Care: A Systematic Review
Systematic review that identified widely agreed-upon values such as collaboration, coordination, transparency, empowerment, comprehensiveness, co-production, and shared responsibility as foundational to integrated care, regardless of the specific framework used.
Exploration of understanding of integrated care from a public health perspective: A scoping review
Explores integrated care from a public health viewpoint, identifying elements such as cross-sector partnerships, addressing social determinants of health, and population health management as essential to effective integration.
WHO: Integrated people-centred care
The WHO’s Framework on Integrated People-Centred Health Services sets out five core strategies: engaging and empowering people and communities; strengthening governance and accountability; reorienting the model of care; coordinating services within and across sectors; and creating an enabling environment. These strategies are underpinned by principles such as equity, holistic care, and shared decision-making, and are intended to guide countries in designing and implementing integrated care systems.