Services for Patients, Families and Caregivers

The Patients as Partners Initiative funds and helps coordinate a range of self-management programs, training and education sessions, peer supports, and resources for patients, families and caregivers. All of these services are free and open to the public.

Self-Management Programs

  • Pain BC provides the Live Plan Be online self-management and peer support program for people living with chronic pain.
  • The University of Victoria (UVic) Self-Management offers evidence-based peer-led Stanford chronic disease, chronic pain, cancer survivor, diabetes and online chronic disease self-management programs where patients and family caregivers participate in six-week sessions in English, Chinese and Punjabi, and in First Nations communities.

More information on the dates and locations of self-management programs can be found on the Patients as Partners Activity Calendar. 

Training and Educational Sessions

  • The interCultural Online Network (iCON) offers in-person and technology-supported multicultural community education on health literacy and chronic disease management.  Culturally appropriate materials are presented by health care providers in the patients’ first language, mostly for Chinese and South Asian people.
  • Family Caregivers of BC organizes educational sessions on family caregiving.

More information on the dates and locations of training and educations sessions can be found on the Patients as Partners Activity Calendar. 

Peer Supports

  • Pain BC provides the telephone-based Pain Support Line where Pain BC volunteers connect people with chronic pain to existing local, provincial, or federal services. Pain BC  also offers telephone coaching for people living with chronic pain.
  • Family Caregivers of BC offers peer support groups for family caregivers.
  • UVic Self-Management provides telephone coaching for self-management health improvement.

Resources