Y.7.PK.2. "Drawing chronic care pathways": analysing health system design through pathway mapping
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) place sustained demands on health systems, requiring long term coordination between prevention, primary care, specialist services and community based support. Across Europe, health systems respond to these challenges in different ways. In some contexts, chronic care is organised through formally defined pathways set out in policy, regulation or formal agreements, while in others coordination relies more implicitly on usual practice. These organisational arrangements are often not made explicit, which limits understanding and comparison of how care is designed across health systems, including service planning, coordination mechanisms and the roles and collaborative functions of different care settings. This PechaKucha session presents a structured mapping methodology developed within the European Joint Action on cardiovascular diseases and diabetes (JACARDI). The methodology is designed to support system level analysis of chronic care by focusing on how care is organised by design beyond the lens of individual patient experiences. By translating formal and informal care pathways into a shared visual representation, the approach maps how care is organised and coordinated across settings and where there may be gaps in or in between formal and informal care pathways. The methodology is intended to support structured reflection on continuity, access and alignment between different components of chronic care and to help identify action points for intervention design and/or system strengthening. Applied across multiple European settings and disease contexts, it has demonstrated potential as a transferable approach for analysing care pathway design across health systems. Through a series of PechaKucha presentations, participants will be introduced to the pathway-mapping methodology developed within JACARDI, examples of its application to diabetes and CVD pathways in Europe, and its potential use by public health professionals, researchers and policymakers to analyse and compare care pathway design across settings, support health system learning and inform the organisation of chronic care. Together, the presentations demonstrate how pathway mapping can support comparative learning and inform improvements in chronic care organisation across health systems. By the end of the session, participants will have gained insight into a transferable methodology that can be applied to analyse and compare care pathway design across a range of chronic conditions. The session introduces public health professionals, researchers and policymakers to a practical and replicable method that can support learning, inform policy and strengthen the organisation of chronic care. Key messages • A standardised pathway-mapping methodology enables transferable system-level analysis of chronic care design across countries and chronic conditions. • Visualising care pathway design supports structured comparison, identifies coordination gaps, and informs health system strengthening. Speakers/Panellists Fanny Monnet University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium Katrien Danhieux University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium Monika Martens Department of Family Medicine and Population Health (FAMPOP), University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium
Institution: University of Antwerp
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,181
OpenAlex ID: W7223681346