As summer comes to an end and the leaves begin to change, we’re gearing up for yet another academic year. Of course many of us have been working throughout the summer and in fact our post graduate programs have been well into their academic year. I hope everyone was still able to revel in the smells of sunscreen, bonfires, the lake and camp, fresh fish, and forest air. I have to say that I have never seen such bright sunsets, heard such bounding thunder, nor experienced such brilliant rainbows as I did in Northern Ontario.
Uniquely Northern
These two weeks have taken me to Thunder Bay several times and meetings around Ontario, with more plans to travel to where NOSM must be represented; including communities further north, and at the Council of Ontario Faculties of Medicine, and the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada and the Colleges.
It is critical that NOSM is seen in all these places, because NOSM is truly unique. No other voice can adequately represent the Northern perspective on health-care education. If not, we risk being unheard or left out of competing province-wide decisions and national strategies in resource allocation and policy-making. No other school of medicine has a mandate such as NOSM, and no other part of Ontario suffers the health disparities and inequities as the North.
Dynamic conversations and creating a culture of kindness
Since my last blog, I’ve met an incredible number of new people. I had the honour of meeting NOSM’s Indigenous Reference Group (IRG) and Ogichidaang Gagiigatiziwin — NOSM’s Circle of Elders and Traditional Knowledge Keepers — on July 19. I’d like to extend my gratitude to the IRG and the Elders for the Welcome Ceremony and the Eagle Feather that they gifted me. As well, I met with Monique Rocheleau, Chair of the Francophone Reference Group on July 9. I shall cherish the trust and kinship that these meetings generated for us all.
We were fortunate to host a meeting in Sudbury at our School with the Federal Minister of Health, the Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, and MPs Paul Lefebvre and Marc Serré last week. We discussed NOSM’s unique social accountability mandate and our potential to push that mandate to the next level. We talked about barriers to equitable access to care, the disparity between rural versus urban health care, the greater opportunities for Federal support and partnership, critical health human resource issues, health-care delivery issues and building capacity. I’m happy to say that our messages were direct, clear and were heard. NOSM is positioned to be a resource to the Federal government in solutions to health human resource planning, policy in social determinants of health, addictions and Indigenous and Francophone health.
