Definition

The factor – Clear Mandates, Vision, and Goals for Collaboration – involves five elements:

• Clear mandate for collaboration,
• Congruent focus,
• Formal agreements,
• Organizational structures that enable collaboration,
• Role delineation.

Clear mandates, vision, and goals for collaboration relates to commonalities between mandate, purpose, goals, and/or identity that brings primary care and public health together and enables collaboration.

Clear Mandate for Collaboration
Having a clear mandate for collaboration is foundational to ensure a streamlined intersectoral approach. It is vital to ensure that there is an expectation that partners work collaboratively with each other. For example, primary care staff are encouraged to work with public health partners towards the improvement of population health. Ideally, the collaboration’s mandate sets out this principle during the initial engagement phase.

Congruent Focus
A congruent focus acknowledges that a shared focus between primary care and public health on prevention and promotion efforts can facilitate collaboration.

Formal Agreements
Formal agreements act as the foundation of successful collaboration. They include all types of high level formal agreements between stakeholders, such as Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) or affiliate agreements.

Organizational Structures
Organizational structures refer to the size and complexity and nature of the organizations involved, for example, large unionized bureaucracies can negatively influence collaboration processes.

Role Delineation
Role delineation of partners is evident in written documents so that understanding of various roles is clarified early in the collaboration at the organizational level.