BC Rural Health Network President Peggy Skelton and Executive Director Paul Adams visit Victoria
President’s report 2023
The Mission of the BCRHN hasn’t changed since its inception in 2018: to promote and support a health services system that improves and sustains the health and well- being of residents of rural communities across British Columbia.
In preparing for our Annual General Meeting and update, it just amazed me how much work has been done and how much we have accomplished towards our mission!
Here are the highlights:
Our membership has grown from 83 members in 2022 to 107 here in 2023, we welcomed our latest member, the Alzheimer Society of BC just this week. We also marked our first Regional District members in 2023 with the inclusion of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District (TNRD) and the Regional District of Central Kootenay (RDCK). We now boast 2 Regional Districts, 30 municipalities, 56 organizations and 19 individuals!
Our membership has grown and with it so has our website which continues to become more responsive to the needs of our members. It is a cornucopia of information and I encourage everyone to check it frequently! Every day we are assembling new information for rural residents and our community outreach engagements are creating new understandings of programming and information that many just don’t know exists. We anticipate additional membership drives and further website development over the next year.
We have rebranded and created a new logo that truly reflects our pan-provincial and solutions-driven operations. We now have access to a renowned marketing executive who is assisting our development of high-quality marketing materials and graphics to enhance our public engagement and improve our overall outreach.
Pretty impressive!
Your board has been busy in a variety of initiatives both internally and in the community.
The operations of our organization are driven from our Board and the work done through our committees. The board continues to be informed and inform other agencies and we welcomed Aidan Mouellic as our first Ministry of Health Liaison. Aidan joins Valerie St John with the BC Association of Community Health Centres (BCACHC) and Jude Kornelsen with the UBC Rural Health Research Centre as our valued representatives from these prestigious groups!
One of the new committees that was started in the last year has been our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee (DEIB.) We believe that we must not only recognize the need for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging in representing all members of rural and remote communities but to actively work towards making all members feel welcome and valued. This committee challenges us to take steps toward that goal. This committee is chaired by our board member Jane Osborne, in conjunction with board member Theresa Hamilton, Liaison Dr Jude Kornelsen, and our staff member Phoebe Lazier, and is attracting new participants from across the province.
We appreciate your time and commitment to this committee!
The Implementation Committee under the lead of Dr. Jude Kornelsen continues to meet regularly and involve many people interested in health equity for rural and remote residents. This committee drives the policy positions of the BCRHN and continues to work on important initiatives such as their current work on a policy paper on distributive surgical services. Policy papers are produced and then approved by the board. To date, official positions have been produced on Optimizing Community Participation in Healthcare Planning, Travel Subsidies for Rural Residents, and Relocation Support for Rural Birthers. These are extremely interesting meetings with rich discussions that lead to tangible action. Thank you to all those who are involved. If you are interested in joining this dynamic group of community champions, please contact Paul (paul.adams@bcruralhealth.org). In January 2023, the Premier announced the newly created role of Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Health (PSRH). We feel it is extremely important to have this direct link to the government. The Network views this role as a significant means for rural communities and organizations to engage directly with the Ministry of Health through an MLA whose lived and living experiences come from a rural perspective. We hope that this role will be enshrined in the government and accepted by all political parties as a much needed and necessary connection point for rural and remote peoples across BC. The current PSRH, Jennifer Rice, has not only been engaged in our conversations but has also been most helpful in reaching the government and navigating the system from within Victoria. We thank Jennifer for her hard work on behalf of all rural residents in BC!
We have continued to have an increasing amount of media attention, in print, social media, TV and radio. From small-town publications to national news agencies, we have established extensive media contacts both provincially and nationally. Paul in his role as Executive Director as well as Dr Jude Kornelsen and others have repeatedly been asked for interviews. This has expanded the voice of our Network and brought the important work and the positive reputation of the Network to the forefront of many resulting in new contacts and opportunities. Thank you for representing us so well!
A new partnership began because of an interview Paul did about a situation where a family dealt with financial issues to get to care in Northern BC. In hearing of the hardship, Chief Hope Officer Mark Rubinstein, of Hope Air reached out to ask how they could help. This conversation has led to a new community outreach program to create awareness about travel assistance programs through Hope Air and a relationship that continues to inform and assist rural patients throughout BC.
This new outreach program works in parallel with a contract provided by the BC Association of Community Health Centres (BCACHC). Thank you to Val St John and the BCACHC team for the great work they do in creating new models of team-based care that truly include and engage with communities to develop locally driven health centres that provide a model of excellence for rural BC. Our contract has been to engage with community champions across BC and to inform them of the CHC model, how to get started and to gain insights into local health challenges and systems to improve the knowledge base on individual communities. Through the contract with BCACHC and with Hope Air we are building data sets, engaging with new contacts, and improving the knowledge of existing programs that many can benefit from including community outreach, regarding CHCs and travel assistance.
Further to this, a grant provided from the United Way, allows us to simultaneously engage with communities on Emergency Response and Preparedness for rural seniors. Understanding where gaps exist in service and learning from the successes of others allows us to provide information in a bi-directional fashion between ourselves, rural communities and all our wonderful partners!
These contracts have allowed us to be able to welcome Phoebe Lazier to our ranks. Phoebe is exceptional in meeting people, has a wonderful ability to make people comfortable and is a great listener. She has been a remarkable in engaging rural and remote communities and provide this important information to our contractual partners.
Phoebe’s work has really created an amazing insight into the gaps that exist in connection with rural communities and rurally relevant information provision to them. This awareness is further supported through our combined work with Jude and her team at UBC and in the co-research project we have embarked on performing a gap analysis on community engagement in healthcare policy development in BC. Although we have been aware of the lack of engagement felt by ourselves and our members on healthcare policy development, this important research provides the evidence needed to support our concerns.
Jude’s work is just wrapping up on this important research paper and it will soon be published, and peer reviewed. We believe these types of research projects that truly capture the lived and living experiences of rural residents are much needed in redeveloping health strategies in rural areas of the province. We have several other grant applications in play with Jude’s team and hope to announce the next round of research in the New Year.
We have also been invited to present and attend numerous conferences such as the Breathe and Weave Conference at UBC, the Green Party of BC Townhall on health, Putting Patients First Conference, the International Leadership Conference, the Hospice Care Alliance of BC Roundtable, Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM), Greater Vancouver Board of Trade Health Conference, and a recent event hosted by Health Quality BC on Community Engagement.
Our presence at UBCM would not have been possible without the presence of our Board members and liaisons attending through other organizations and municipalities and we must acknowledge the great work of Leonard Casley, Colin Moss, Jude Kornelsen and Valerie St John. They not only were able to promote their own communities and organizations but helped us spread the word about the BCRHN. Another very helpful connection at UBCM is one of our new municipal members and her worship Sarrah Storey (Mayor of Fraser Lake) who has been a key player within UBCM in the North and we congratulate her on her election to the UBCM Executive for the upcoming year!
We have continued to engage in a variety of workshops and learning opportunities through UW Healthy Aging CORE, UBC, UVic, UNBC, UBCO and on the Federal stage where I participated in discussions hosted by the Society of Rural Physicians Canada on Rural Patient Transfer.
We seek continuous improvement and none of us are beyond learning new skills and becoming better in our roles. In this regard, Paul has applied for and been accepted to the United Way Policy Planning Institute where he will learn from and network with many key stakeholders and leaders in the NGO/non-profit sector starting in January 2024!
We also are very pleased to continue our positive relationships with other partners including RCCBC, the Stigma Free Society, Health Quality BC, the BC Health Coalition, IHA, BCEHS, FNHA, BC Hospice Association, BCCRNs, Crisis Centre of BC, and many others. Our network grows daily!
We are very pleased that at our meetings we enjoyed a number of guest speakers. This includes a quarterly visit from Leanne Heppell, Chief Ambulance Officer of BC. Jennifer Rice has been present at several of our Board meetings. We have enjoyed presentations from BC Health Coalition (Usman Mushtaq), Crisis Centre of BC (Stacey Ashton). Hope Air (Mark Rubinstein) and many guests who have enhanced our meetings with their insights and wisdom. We are able to share up-to-date information with our membership as well as inform our guests of rural realities through these direct engagements.
We were very pleased to have hosted a special board meeting with Health Minister Adrian Dix. We were pleased to discuss how we operate as the BCRHN, and how we represent rural BC and to highlight some of our accomplishments to date. This led to Paul, and I being invited to Victoria to meet with the Minister and Jennifer Rice, Parliamentary Secretary for Rural Health and submit a proposed budget for consideration. We were delighted to be informed that funding would be provided at year-end to allow us to expand our outreach and education regarding rural health across the province! We look forward to learning the details of this funding in March! We will prove just how effective we can be in disseminating information across rural communities and in building better health for all, with the assistance of resources provided to the effort.
While in Victoria we were able to meet with the NDP rural caucus and as we are apolitical, non-partisan and transparent, we also met with the BC Green Party and the BC United Party and engaged positively with many rural based MLAs from across the political spectrum.
I would be amiss in this annual update to not share my gratitude to our Board of Directors, Liaisons, Committee members, and our members. The countless hours of your volunteerism never cease to amaze and humble me, many thanks!
To Phoebe, who with her ability to engage people and communities has added so much to our organization, thank you!
Paul, I’m not sure how to thank you, to sum up all the hours and expertise you give us as a Network. You represent us so well at meetings, media events, as well as any day-to-day interactions! I appreciate your sage advice in helping the events go forward on our journey for health equity. I am so grateful!
So now for my last thank you for the year … and trust me, it’s a tough one! As you are aware, Colin Moss has been with the Network almost since its inception. He has been a constant supporter of the Network and a tireless worker in our mission of gaining health equity. He has been our Vice President as well as Chair of our membership committee, and someone whose opinion I have come to trust, his ability to represent us in so many different areas and who has been a real leader, I have even come to enjoy his sense of humour!
He has resigned from our network to pursue Public Service in the political arena.
We wish him nothing but the best and he will forever be a friend of the Network, and I will always be proud to call him a friend!
So, with that I will close my annual update.
Thank you for your membership in the BC Rural Health Network, our impact continues to grow because of your voice!
