The Change Foundation launches province-wide student photo contest with a question: What does healthcare experience look like across Ontario today?

CALL TO ELIGIBLE STUDENTS TO ENTER PROVINCE-WIDE PHOTO CONTEST APRIL 1-JULY 1

TORONTO, April 4, 2013 /CNW/ - The Change Foundation has launched a creative new opportunity to highlight the importance of improving patient and caregiver experience in Ontario. Called Framing the Experience: A photo contest to capture patients' healthcare experiences in Ontario, the competition runs from April 1 to July 1, 2013. It challenges post-secondary students from across the province to reflect on and reflect Ontarians' healthcare experiences.

Open to students in photography, journalism and digital imaging programs, Framing the Experience offers more than $6,000 in prizes. Its goal is to raise awareness and to broaden the discussion about people's lived realities and quality of life as they move through the province's healthcare system, either receiving care or supporting those who do.

"We are asking students to capture the emotions, interactions and stories of patients and caregivers wherever and whatever they are," says Cathy Fooks, CEO of the independent healthcare think tank. "We are challenging them to show us — and to help us show — what healthcare experience looks like and feels like for patients and caregivers across Ontario today."

Fooks says understanding how people are experiencing healthcare as they interact with the many parts and players in the system is the first step to improving that experience. She adds that patient and caregiver perspectives and input should be ever present when designing and delivering care. She hopes the contest will prompt both those taking the photograph and those reflecting on it to think in new ways about what really matters to people as they experience healthcare.

The contest extends The Change Foundation's outreach efforts to a new and younger audience inviting photographs that evoke emotions, tell stories, and provoke thought.  The Foundation anticipates images that show interactions and relationships, convey issues and impact, and illuminate the nature and effect of healthcare interactions — from the incidental to the ongoing, from the clinical to the emotional. We hope to showcase compelling images that reflect the faces and places of all regions of the province. Submissions can be realistic, abstract or symbolic.

The contest is a natural extension of The Change Foundation's research, policy and public engagement work aimed at improving the experience of patients and the family and friends who care for them. As the Ontario healthcare community experiments with new ways to deliver patient-centred care as promised in the government's Action Plan for Health Care and other policy initiatives, the Foundation hopes this contest will help keep patient and family healthcare experience truly front and centre on the agenda. "These pictures of patients and caregivers' lived realities could in this case be worth 100 healthcare reports."

A jury will select up to 12 winning images. The images will be used on the Foundation website, in its reports and materials, and will hang on the Foundation's walls. The winners will be announced publicly at an event in the fall of 2013.

Interested applicants should review the Contest Info, Rules and Guidelines and the Foundation's Intro Letter to Facilities.

And if you fit the bill, complete the Contest Application Form and submit your entries to [email protected].

The Change Foundation is an independent healthcare think tank, intent on changing the debate, the practice, and the healthcare experience in Ontario. We lead and leverage research, policy analysis, service redesign/quality improvement projects, and public engagement to achieve our strategic goal: to improve people's healthcare experience as they move in, out of, and across the healthcare system over time.

SOURCE: The Change Foundation

Contact The Change Foundation:

Anila Sunnak
Communications Specialist
[email protected]
416.205.1325
changefoundation.com