Healthy people in healthy communities

Northwest

Staff are working on ways to prevent overdose deaths in the northwest. This includes helping more people through the take home naloxone program, giving harm reduction supplies to those who need it and giving more information to people at risk of overdose.

Mills Memorial Hospital and Terraceview Lodge in Terrace have started a student volunteer program. High school students can now volunteer their time at both places, and patients benefit from having the students help staff with activities and social events.

The Terrace and Kitimat Indigenous Health Improvement Committee (IHIC) made several culturally sensitive videos to help educate health care providers, patients and the public. The committee celebrated these videos in the community of Gitaus with Indigenous Elders and community members from the Northwest.

Kick it up Kitimat (a partnership between Northern Health and the District of Kitimat) continues to work on projects that support education, exercise and using local recreation facilities, healthy diet choices and promoting health.

Northern Health and the Ministry for Children and Family Development partnered with the National Institute of Families for Child and Youth Mental Health to announce a new Parent in Residence working in Smithers. This role offers peer support, education, mentoring, and help in finding services to families and caregivers looking after children, youth or young adults with mental health and/or substance use challenges.

Local Indigenous cultural learning sessions were held in Smithers and Hazelton. Elders and experts on language, culture, and traditional practices shared their knowledge with health care providers. 

In Hazelton, four outreach clinics, including lab services, now run every week for Indigenous communities (Gitseglukla, Gitwangak, Gitanow and Kispiox).

Wrinch Memorial Hospital (in Hazelton):

• The hospital celebrated the unveiling of Gitxsan button blanket artwork, made by residential school survivors. The event provided an open forum and was a step forward in healing. The artwork hangs in the foyer as a symbol of the unbreakable bond between mother and child, and the strength provided by the Wolf, Fireweed, Frog and Eagle Clans of the Gitxsan people.
• The hospital also hosted a wedding for a Gitsxan couple to help their family celebrate together, as the bride's father was in palliative care and not expected to see his daughter’s wedding.

Wrinch Memorial Hospital is now offering traditional Indigenous foods as part of the regular menu to residents and patients. In addition, these traditional Indigenous foods are being offered as a regular feature menu item at Mills Memorial Hospital, Terraceview Lodge, Kitimat General Hospital, Haida Gwaii Hospital and Health Centre, and Northern Haida Gwaii Hospital and Health Centre.

The Village of Queen Charlotte has formed a healthy community committee, focused on food security. The group worked closely with other Local Foods 2 School projects and also held a number of events to help bring youth, food providers and local government together.

• For example, the committee supported 30 high school students to visit K’aasda Llngaay (Copper Bay). The Haida Fisheries Guardians and representatives from the Haida Heritage Centre at Kay Llngaay performed a traditional salmon ceremony. This is the first time in 12 years that the school did such a trip.

Masset in Motion continues to support local organizations who are trying to get people in the community to eat more local and traditional food (at schools, hospitals, food bank, and elders programs).

Northern Health is working with organizations that support local resource development (such as forestry and mining) to make sure they plan for the health care needs of temporary workers coming to the northwest region. This is helping to make sure that health care services for local residents keep running smoothly. 

Northern Interior

The City of Quesnel, BC Housing and Northern Health met to talk about housing and care needs for seniors in the Quesnel area. BC Housing is funding two projects in Quesnel, together with the local Lions Club and the Dakelh and Quesnel Community Housing Society, and there will be 68 new housing units added in the community. 

Omineca communities received $7500 in grants to develop walking and ski trails to help promote healthy lifestyles for local residents and visitors. 

The Omineca Aboriginal Health Improvement Committee has developed teaching videos to support people in Indigenous communities and health care providers in preparing for a health care appointment so that they get the most out of a visit. 

In Prince George, a peer-led community kitchen was developed to help teach mental health service users how to cook healthy meals on a budget. Benefits of the program include:    

• Getting a sense of community by working together and sharing food.
• Learning how to work well with others.
• Becoming self-empowered (learning how to feel better about yourself, making good choices, a feeling of mattering in society) and reaching goals.

Northeast

The Northeast Overdose Response Committee worked on the following:

• More Take Home Naloxone kits are now available in emergency departments and community programs, and also at agencies outside Northern Health.    
• Residents in Fort Nelson and Chetwynd can now get opioid antagonist therapy through telehealth(videoconferencing) with support from Fort St. John psychiatrists.   
• In Dawson Creek, opioid antagonist therapy is now provided by a local doctor (who works with interprofessional teams).

Dawson Creek

• Dawson Creek and District Hospital restarted a Smoke Free campaign.
• A beautification committee has been started at the hospital with staff volunteers and their family members who want to keep the front of the hospital looking nice. Equipment, time and resources such as flower pots, seeds and perennials, a picker truck and gardening tools were donated or purchased by local businesses and the ladies auxiliary.
• A junior volunteer program is being planned due to increasing interest shown by community members (mainly high school students) who both want to volunteer at the hospital and accumulate volunteer hours (which is now a requirement when seeking post-secondary health care profession education).

Fort Nelson

• Chalo School, located in the Fort Nelson First Nation community, has started a work experience program in partnership with Fort Nelson General Hospital.

Fort St. John

• A Fort St. John Community Overdose Prevention & Response Working Group was started to help local people at risk for opioid overdose . It includes representatives from Indigenous communities, the women’s resource centre, the friendship centre, RCMP (police), local pharmacies, ambulance, high schools, and Northern Health.
• Staff are working with the women’s resource centre to help support those living with HIV and hepatitis C in Fort St John.
• The Fort St. John Healthy Living Alliance Committee received a $7,000 Partnering for Healthier Communities Grant to provide a coping strategy workshop for non-profit leaders to help with the challenges of their work.

Tumbler Ridge

• In 2016, the Tumbler Ridge Healthy Communities Committee used an IMAGINE Community Grant to install three benches along the wellness walking path through town; and put up 27 window cling art pieces around the health centre (including pictures of local citizens enjoying outdoor activities in Tumbler Ridge, such as hiking, canoeing, dinosaur digging etc.)

Public health protection

Public Health Protection staff work with many different groups, including communities, local governments, school districts, the First Nations Health Authority, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations to support healthier communities and to protect the health of people in the north. 

Public Health programs include: Safe Drinking Water, Food Safety, Recreational Water (hot tubs, pools, etc.), Child Care and Residential Facilities, Tobacco Enforcement, Personal Services (tattoo parlors, tanning facilities, etc.), Land Use (sewerage), Communicable Disease Control, Health Hazard and Emergency Response, and other activities.

All programs are going to do a business review and work on projects to improve service quality, including:

• Better collection of information for programs
• Making sure programs are following current B.C. laws
• More training and education for staff

Office of Health and Resource Development

The Office of Health and Resource Development continues to be busy working on many different environmental assessments (looking at dangers to land and health) for big projects in the north like mines, pipelines, and liquid natural gas facilities. For those companies that have started construction for projects, they are using our Health and Medical Services Plan Best Management Guide for Industrial Camps to help lower effects on health services (like hospitals).

We continue to work with the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) and other research partners to improve our knowledge of health and resource development. We have also been working to put more information on our website, including a new “Northern Health Emergency Roles and Responsibilities” document.

Epidemiology and surveillance

Our work includes studying the diseases and illnesses that affect northern residents, and how these impact our health services. Over the past year, we have been able to collect more public health data and information which will help us better understand health issues in our region. Our successes have included:

• Helping people in the north as part of the declaration of a public health emergency around opioid overdoses
• Partnering with the BC Observatory for Population & Public Health, which has added another epidemiologist (someone who studies health and disease) to Northern Health
• Working with academic institutions (colleges, universities, etc.) and the Canadian Public Health Serviceto have more practicum students working at Northern Health
• Reviewed the Communicable Disease Surveillance System (improving response to disease outbreaks).
• A review of dental and vision screening at Northern Health
• Helping staff to build their skills through the BC Surveillance and Epidemiology Community of Practice (sharing knowledge with other people in B.C. who work in epidemiology)
• Started the Community Health Data Steering Committee to help lead community health data(information) needs in the north

Preventive public health

Preventive Public Health is committed to protecting and improving the health of people in the north. Our key projects for the year include:

• Putting a new way of supporting and managing staff into place, and also helping support preventive public health services delivered through primary health care.
• Improving the electronic laboratory reporting of communicable disease (illness caused by infection), which will find public health risks sooner.
• Having more HIV point of care testing sites in the north so that more people can get tested for HIV.
• In response to the overdose emergency in BC:
  • A small overdose prevention site was set up in Prince George;
  • Staff, first responders and other community partners across the region were trained to reverse overdoses and save lives; and
  • Persons at risk for overdose, and their loved ones, can now more easily get Naloxone (the medication used to overturn opioid overdoses) as there are now 38 new ‘Take Home Naloxone’ sites across the north.
• An information campaign to help people learn more about the harmful impacts of stigma against people who use drugs.
• Giving more education and information to moms with babies about infant feeding and immunizations(protecting against illness).

Population Health programs

Population Health staff support and work together with persons and families, health system partners and local community partners to promote healthy lifestyles and prevent chronic disease. 

Programs include stopping smoking, injury awareness and prevention, healthy eating, dental health, promotion of physical activity, mental wellness, and raising awareness of substance misuse.

Program staff work together with leaders from across the north to develop and promote healthy policy. Over the past year, there have been important changes to the Population Health team and its programs, with work happening on community grants, building relationships, looking at new ways of doing things, hiring more staff and doing more staff training.